I'm underemployed, recurringly housebound with insanely painful now-sporadic (when I have meds) gout, an enlarged heart, and other health problems, particularly including lifelong recurring severe clinical depression. See here for a major crisis. I'm also sometimes available to some degree as a paid writer or researcher. This is a previous update on my situation & this -- and this from December 19th, 2005 update.
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Sanely free of McCarthyite calling anyone a "traitor" since 2001!
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"The brain is wider than the sky, For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include With ease, and you beside"
-- Emily Dickinson
"We will pursue peace as if there is no terrorism and fight terrorism as if there is no peace."
-- Yitzhak Rabin
"I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be."
-- Alexander Hamilton
"The stakes are too high for government to be a spectator sport."
-- Barbara Jordan
"Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to
trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule --
and both commonly succeed, and are right."
-- H. L. Mencken
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-- William Pitt
"The only completely consistent people are the dead."
-- Aldous Huxley
"I have had my solutions for a long time; but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them."
-- Karl F. Gauss
"Whatever evils either reason or declamation have imputed to extensive empire,
the power of Rome was attended with some beneficial consequences to mankind;
and the same freedom of intercourse which extended the vices, diffused likewise
the improvements of social life."
-- Edward Gibbon
"Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his
expectation, that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were
respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom."
-- Edward Gibbon
"There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify
the evils, of the present times."
-- Edward Gibbon
"Our youth now loves luxuries. They have bad manners, contempt for authority.
They show disrespect for elders and they
love to chatter instead of exercise.
Children are now tyrants, not the servants, of their households. They
no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents,
chatter before company, gobble up their food, and tyrannize
their teachers."
-- Socrates
"Before impugning an opponent's motives, even when they legitimately may be impugned, answer his arguments."
-- Sidney Hook
"Idealism, alas, does not protect one from ignorance, dogmatism, and foolishness."
-- Sidney Hook
"Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization.
We must exercise our power. But we ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect
disinterestedness in its exercise, nor become complacent about particular degrees of interest
and passion which corrupt the justice by which the exercise of power is legitimized."
-- Reinhold Niebuhr
"Faced with the choice of all the land without a Jewish state or a Jewish state without all the
land, we chose a Jewish state without all the land."
-- David Ben-Gurion
"...the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him
an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this
or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages
to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right; that it tends also
to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing,
with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments, those who will externally profess
and conform to it; that though indeed these are criminals who do not withstand such
temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that the
opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction;
that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion
and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their
ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty,
because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of
judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square
with or differ from his own; that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil
government for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts
against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if
left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has
nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her
natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is
permitted freely to contradict them.
-- Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, Thomas Jefferson
"We don't live just by ideas. Ideas are part of the mixture of customs and practices,
intuitions and instincts that make human life a conscious activity susceptible to
improvement or debasement. A radical idea may be healthy as a provocation;
a temperate idea may be stultifying. It depends on the circumstances. One of the most
tiresome arguments against ideas is that their "tendency" is to some dire condition --
to totalitarianism, or to moral relativism, or to a war of all against all."
-- Louis Menand
"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis."
-- Dante Alighieri
"He too serves a certain purpose who only stands and cheers."
-- Henry B. Adams
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the
poor to beg in the streets, steal bread, or sleep under a bridge."
-- Anatole France
"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."
-- Edmund Burke
"Education does not mean that we have become certified experts in business or mining or botany or journalism or epistemology;
it means that through the absorption of the moral, intellectual, and esthetic inheritance of the race we have come to
understand and control ourselves as well as the external world; that we have chosen the best as our associates both in spirit
and the flesh; that we have learned to add courtesy to culture, wisdom to knowledge, and forgiveness to understanding."
-- Will Durant
"Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is
but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest
winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?"
-- Herman Melville
"The most important political office is that of the private citizen."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"It is an error to suppose that books have no influence; it is a slow influence, like flowing water carving out a canyon,
but it tells more and more with every year; and no one can pass an hour a day in the society of sages and heroes without
being lifted up a notch or two by the company he has kept."
-- Will Durant
"When you write, you’re trying to transpose what you’re thinking into something that is less like an annoying drone and more like a piece of music."
-- Louis Menand
"Sex is a continuum."
-- Gore Vidal
"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should
make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, 1802.
"The sum of our religion is peace and unanimity, but these can scarcely stand unless we define as little as possible,
and in many things leave one free to follow his own judgment, because there is great obscurity in many matters, and
man suffers from this almost congenital disease that he will not give in when once a controversy is started, and
after he is heated he regards as absolutely true that which he began to sponsor quite casually...."
-- Desiderius Erasmus
"Are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule of what we are to read, and what we must disbelieve?"
-- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to N. G. Dufief, Philadelphia bookseller, 1814
"We are told that it is only people's objective actions that matter, and their subjective feelings are of no importance. Thus pacifists, by obstructing the war effort,
are 'objectively' aiding the Nazis; and therefore the fact that they may be personally hostile to Fascism is irrelevant. I have been guilty of saying this myself more than once. The same argument is applied to Trotskyism. Trotskyists are often credited, at any rate by Communists, with being active and conscious agents of Hitler; but when you point out the many and obvious reasons why this is unlikely to be true,
the 'objectively' line of talk is brought forward again. To criticize the Soviet Union helps Hitler: therefore 'Trotskyism is Fascism'. And when this has been established, the accusation of conscious treachery is usually repeated.
This is not only dishonest; it also carries a severe penalty with it. If you disregard people's motives, it becomes much harder to foresee their actions."
-- George Orwell, "As I Please," Tribune, 8 December 1944
"Wouldn't this be a great world if insecurity and desperation made us more attractive? If 'needy' were a turn-on?"
-- "Aaron Altman," Broadcast News
"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand."
-- Lewis Thomas
"To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child. For what is man's lifetime unless the memory of past events is woven with those of earlier times?"
-- Cicero
"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself."
-- Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign
"Remember, Robin: evil is a pretty bad thing."
-- Batman
"Being evil is not a full-time job."
-- James Lileks
Gary Farber is now a licensed Double Super-Secret Master Pundit.
He does not always refer to himself in the third person.
Did he mention he was presently single?
The lutefisk is dead. Donate via the donation button on the top left
or I'll shoot this gefilte fish.
No, really, I seriously need the help at present. And I hate asking.
Current Total # of Donations Since Blog Began: 587
Subscribers to date at $5/month: 29 sign-ups; 15 cancellations; Total= 14
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And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
Farber's First Fundamental of Blogging:
If your idea of making an insightful point is to make fun of people's
names, or refer to them by rilly clever labels such as "The Big Me" or "The Shrub,"
chances are high that I'm not reading your blog. The same applies if you refer
to a group of people by disparaging terms such as "the Donks" or "the pals." (Note: I have to say I don't give that much of a damn any more.)
Farber's Second Fundamental of Blogging:
The more interested you are in scoring a "point" for a political "team," a "side," than in exploring the validity or value of an idea, the less interested I am in what you're saying.
(Note: Partially suspended for the Duration.)
Farber's Third Fundamental of Blogging:
If you see a link on another blog, and use it, credit the blog.
Some places I go:
[weblogs, sites, and columns]
People I've known and still miss include Isaac Asimov, rich brown, Charles Burbee, F. M. "Buzz" Busby, Terry Carr, A. Vincent Clarke, George Alec Effinger,
Bill & Sherry Fesselmeyer, George Flynn, John Milo "Mike" Ford. John Foyster, Jay Haldeman, Chuch Harris, Mike Hinge, Lee Hoffman, Terry Hughes, Damon Knight, Ross Pavlac, Bruce Pelz, Elmer Perdue, Tom Perry,
Larry Propp, Bill Rotsler, Art Saha, Bob Shaw, Martin Smith, Harry Stubbs, Bob Tucker, Reed Waller, Harry Warner, Jr., Jack Williamson, Walter A. Willis, Susan Wood, Kate Worley, and Roger Zelazny.
It's just a start.
And She of whom I must write someday.
You Like Me, You Really Like Me
...Darn: I saw that Gary had commented on this thread, and thought: oh. my. god. Perfect storm. Unstoppable cannonball, immovable object.
-- Hilzoy
Guessing that Gary is ignorant of anything that has ever been written down is, in my experience, unwise.
Just saying.
-- Hilzoy
Where would the blogosphere be without the Guardian? Guardian fish-barreling is now a venerable tradition. Yet even within this tradition, I don't believe there has ever been a more extensive and thorough essay than this one, from Gary Farber's fine blog. Gary appears to have examined every single thing that Guardian/Observer columnist Mary Ridell has ever written. He ties it all together, reaches inevitable conclusion. An archive can be a weapon.
-- Dr. Frank
Isn't Gary a cracking blogger, apropos of nothing in particular?
-- Alison Scott
I usually read you and Patrick several times a day, and I always get something from them. You've got great links, intellectually honest commentary, and a sense of humor. What's not to like?
-- Ted Barlow
...writer[s] I find myself checking out repeatedly when I'm in the mood to play follow-the-links. They're not all people I agree with all the time, or even most of the time, but I've found them all to be thoughtful writers, and that's the important thing, or should be.
-- Tom Tomorrow
Amygdala - So much stuff it reminds Unqualified Offerings that UO sometimes thinks of Gary Farber as "the liberal Instapundit." -- Jim Henley
I look at it almost every day. I can't follow all the links, but I read most of your pieces. The blog format really seems to suit you. It also suits me; I am not a news junkie, so having smart people like you ferret out the interesting stuff and leave it where I can find it is wonderful.
-- Lydia Nickerson
Gary is certainly a non-idiotarian 'liberal'...
-- Perry deHaviland
...the thoughtful and highly intelligent Gary Farber... My first reaction was that I definitely need to appease Gary Farber of Amygdala, one of the geniuses of our age.
-- Brad deLong
My friend Gary Farber at Amygdala is the sort of liberal for whom I happily give three cheers. [...] Damned incisive blogging....
-- Midwest Conservative Journal
If I ever start a paper, Clueless writes the foreign affairs column, Layne handles the city beat, Welch has the roving-reporter job, Tom Tomorrow runs the comic section (which carries Treacher, of course). MediaMinded runs the slots - that's the type of editor I want as the last line of defense. InstantMan runs the edit page - and you can forget about your Ivins and Wills and Friedmans and Teepens on the edit page - it's all Blair, VodkaP, C. Johnson, Aspara, Farber, Galt, and a dozen other worthies, with Justin 'I am smoking in such a provocative fashion' Raimondo tossed in for balance and comic relief.
Who wouldn't buy that paper? Who wouldn't want to read it? Who wouldn't climb over their mother to be in it?
-- James Lileks
Gary is a perceptive, intelligent, nice guy. Some of the stuff he comes up with is insightful, witty, and stimulating. And sometimes he manages to make me groan.
-- Charlie Stross
One of my issues with many poli-blogs is the dickhead tone so many bloggers affect to express their sense of righteous indignation. Gary Farber's thoughtful leftie takes on the world stand in sharp contrast with the usual rhetorical bullying. Plus, he likes "Pogo," which clearly attests to his unassaultable good taste.
-- oakhaus.com
Gary Farber is a principled liberal....
-- Bill Quick, The Daily Pundit
I read Amygdala...with regularity, as do all sensible websurfers.
-- Jim Henley, Unqualified Offerings
Okay, he is annoying, but he still posts a lot of good stuff.
-- Avedon Carol, The Sideshow
The only trouble with reading Amygdala is that it makes me feel like such a slacker. That Man Farber's a linking, posting, commenting machine, I tell you!
-- John Robinson, Sore Eyes
Jaysus. I saw him do something like this before, on a thread about Israel. It was pretty brutal. It's like watching one of those old WWF wrestlers grab an opponent's
face and grind away until the guy starts crying. I mean that in a nice & admiring way, you know.
-- Fontana Labs, Unfogged
We read you Gary Farber! We read you all the time! Its just that we are lazy with our blogroll. We are so very very lazy. We are always the last ones to the party but we always have snazzy bow ties.
-- Fafnir, Fafblog!
Gary Farber you are a genius of mad scientist proportions. I will bet there are like huge brains growin in jars all over your house.
-- Fafnir, Fafblog!
Gary Farber is the hardest working man in show blog business. He's like a young Gene Hackman blogging with his hair on fire, or something.
-- Belle Waring, John & Belle Have A Blog
I bow before the shrillitudinousness of Gary Farber, who has been blogging like a fiend.
-- Ted Barlow, Crooked Timber
Gary Farber only has two blogging modes: not at all, and 20 billion interesting posts a day [...] someone on the interweb whose opinions I can trust....
-- Belle Waring, John & Belle Have A Blog
Gary Farber! Jeez, the guy is practically a blogging legend, and I'm always surprised at the breadth of what he writes about.
-- PZ Meyers, Pharyngula
Gary Farber takes me to task, in a way befitting the gentleman he is.
-- Stephen Green, Vodkapundit
His writings, in linguistics (a discipline which he effectively invented) and on the hypocrisy and warmongering of America (and its principal ally) are among the few essential documents of our times. They are also not designed for the intellectually faint-hearted. As the most unforgiving critic of the Washington-run world order, Chomsky is often caricatured as supplying more reality, and more guilt, than many of us care to handle. His books have the manner and certainty of gospels, and they work by accretion, stockpiling the remorseless fact of distant atrocity done in each of our names. They seem to demand not so much readers as disciples....
[...]
The transgressive thrill of Chomsky's world view....
A sentence that means more than intended:
To anyone who has even dipped into his books, the idea of pinning him down or catching him out, or even directing his attention in the course of a truncated hour seems vaguely absurd.
Here's an open-minded question from the interviewer, Tim Adams:
Given 50 years of self-delusion in the land of the free, 50 years in which, in Chomsky's terms, it has wilfully supported and committed war crimes across the globe (from Korea to Angola to Indonesia), I wonder if he can countenance any possibility of redemption?
Fortunately there's nothing hagiographic about this profile. It's tough, incisive, and doesn't let Chomsky off any hook.
Nah, just kidding. The whole thing is impressively eye-rolling-worthy.
There are plenty of folks on the left who say it's Wrong to address any flaws of Chomsky or Michael Moore or, in essence, anyone on the left, when Bush and company have all the power and are who criticism must be focused upon to Achieve Correct Goodness.
I believe that while that's an argument that has a small point, it's an error. An intellectually damaging error, ultimately.
I think they'd be entirely correct if all one did was criticize Chomsky, et al. But while one might make a fine case for arguing more against Bush, et al, than Chomsky -- and I wouldn't take any issue with that, save to note that it's -- thank $DIETY -- no one person's job to Balance All Arguments -- I've always bought the idea that truth is derived from a dialectic of competing ideas.
So I continue to believe that it's crucial for any and all errors of critical thinking to be argued against and pointed out, that they always must be stomped on, as the best way to limit their advance into the public discourse, psyche, and acceptance, whatever their source, and whatever their point of view.
Because bad ideas are -- wait for it -- erroneous. Working with erroneous ideas doesn't, you know, get us anywhere good.
If we give bad ideas and bad arguments a pass simply because they're uttered by someone on Our Side, we'll wind up intellectually incoherent and ultimately incapable of rational sorting out of what's actually sensible and correct from what we're merely Pretending Is Sensible And Correct because it would Hurt One Of Us To Say Otherwise.
That's a path to being, ultimately, brain-dead.
So, as ever, I'll continue to be cranky about anything from corporate corruption in the Bush Administration and Republican Party to questionable foreign policy assumptions by Democrats, to crazy and offensive assertions wherever I see them, as I feel so moved.
If I criticize Chomsky, it doesn't mean I'm going the slightest bit easy on George Bush and his masters. Anyone who thinks otherwise can bite me.
And if I criticize distorted Republican claims and idiotically false attacks on Democrats or the left, it doesn't mean I'm going easy on the actual idiots of the left. Anyone who thinks otherwise can bite me.
As usual, various folks on whatever "side" won't like it. I'll live with that. (Crankily, at times.)
They have discovered that a drug on the market for tuberculosis helps phobics to overcome their worst fears within a week. They believe it could be the anti-phobia pill which scientists have been searching for.
Early results from trials have been greeted with some excitement. The medication, D-cycloserine, works alongside traditional talking therapy and speeds up the process through which sufferers can learn how to beat their irrational panic.
The chemical causes changes to the amygdala, the part of the brain involved in learning and memory. It involves a protein that appears to kick-start a chain of neuro chemical events that enable people to relearn what makes them scared.
This is actually very cool if it turns out to be true (we'll see).
Incidentally, I often suffer from ergasiophobia, but only very slightly from athazagoraphobia. Read The Rest Scale: 3 out of 5 if you don't have Hellenologophobia.
BACK TO THE UK. The Observer is reporting that the Guantanamo prisoners holding British citizenship will be sent back to Britain under an agreement being finalized between the US and UK governments. This follows a similar deal with Australia and the releasing of twenty other inmates.
Read The Rest depending on your level of interest. I don't imagine this will lead to the cessation of referring to the prison as a "concentration camp" or "death camp."
(Boring Necessary Boilerplate: I'm all for close examination of Guantanamo, and have nothing against questioning aspects of its practices or criticizing them where called for; it's the above labels that are over-the-top for me.)
FAREWELL AND HELLO. Julie Burchill goes from the Grauniad to the Times of London (note: never the "London Times," which doesn't exist). The topic of her swan song? Jews and people who hate them.
As you might have heard, I'm leaving the Guardian next year for the Times, having finally been convinced that my evil populist philistinism has no place in a publication read by so many all-round, top-drawer plaster saints. (Well, that and the massive wad they've waved at me.) Once there, I will compose as many love letters to the likes of Mr Murdoch and Pres Bush as my black little heart desires, leaving those who have always objected to my presence on such a fine liberal newspaper as this to read only writers they agree with, with no chance of spoiled digestion as the muesli goes down the wrong way if I so much as murmur about bringing back hanging. (Public.)
Not only do I admire the Guardian, I also find it fun to read, which in a way is more of a compliment. But if there is one issue that has made me feel less loyal to my newspaper over the past year, it has been what I, as a non-Jew, perceive to be a quite striking bias against the state of Israel. Which, for all its faults, is the only country in that barren region that you or I, or any feminist, atheist, homosexual or trade unionist, could bear to live under.
I find this hard to accept because, crucially, I don't swallow the modern liberal line that anti-Zionism is entirely different from anti-semitism; the first good, the other bad. Judeophobia - as the brilliant collection of essays A New Antisemitism? Debating Judeophobia In 21st-Century Britain (axt.org.uk), published this year, points out - is a shape-shifting virus, as opposed to the straightforward stereotypical prejudice applied to other groups (Irish stupid, Japanese cruel, Germans humourless, etc). Jews historically have been blamed for everything we might disapprove of: they can be rabid revolutionaries, responsible for the might of the late Soviet empire, and the greediest of fat cats, enslaving the planet to the demands of international high finance. They are insular, cliquey and clannish, yet they worm their way into the highest positions of power in their adopted countries, changing their names and marrying Gentile women. They collectively possess a huge, slippery wealth that knows no boundaries - yet Israel is said to be an impoverished, lame-duck state, bleeding the west dry.
If you take into account the theory that Jews are responsible for everything nasty in the history of the world, and also the recent EU survey that found 60% of Europeans believe Israel is the biggest threat to peace in the world today (hmm, I must have missed all those rabbis telling their flocks to go out with bombs strapped to their bodies and blow up the nearest mosque), it's a short jump to reckoning that it was obviously a bloody good thing that the Nazis got rid of six million of the buggers. Perhaps this is why sales of Mein Kampf are so buoyant, from the Middle Eastern bazaars unto the Edgware Road, and why The Protocols of The Elders of Zion could be found for sale at the recent Anti-racism Congress in Durban.
Read The Rest Scale: 4 out of 5. What's the most popular response from many going to be?
MORE CBGB. Here and here are parts of founder Hilly Kristal's personal history:
The beginning of what we now think of as CBGB came early on. I was on a ladder in front of the club fixing the awning in place, when I looked down to notice three scruffy dudes in torn jeans and T shirts looking up at me inquisitively
"WHAT'S GOIN' ON?" or something of that nature, was the question they asked.
They were Tom Verlaine, Richard Hell, and Richard Lloyd, three of the four members of the rock group "Television." A few days later, Terry Ork, Television's manager came around to try and get the band a gig at CBGB.
He was a pudgy little dynamo with a pension [sic; he clearly means "penchant" -- gf] for non-stop talking; energy and enthusiasm up to here. He believed Television was going to be the hottest new sound since John Cage first played his "clothes line."
Since at that time we weren't open on Sunday, I decided to give Television a try out, about three and a half weeks hence, on a Sunday.
The admission was one dollar. ----It was not an impressive debut (at least not in my opinion). There were only a few paid customers and not too many more friends. They not only didn't pay admission but didn't have any money for drinks.
I thought the band was terrible; screechy, ear-splitting guitars and a jumble of sounds that "I just didn't get." I said, " NEVER AGAIN!!!" After much cajoling and haranguing, however, Terry Ork persuaded me to let them play again with another "hot' new rock group from Forest Hills, Queens. They were called "The Ramones." Terry said that the Ramones had a big following and the combination of the two bands will make a great show. I thought, "What the hell, what do we have to lose!!?....Ha!"
Well the anticipated night came, and there were not many more people than before.
As for the Ramones, they were even worse than Television. At that first gig at CBGB, they were the most untogether group I'd ever heard.
They kept starting and stopping-equipment breaking down- and yelling at each other. They were a mess.
Little did I suspect that both Television and the Ramones would eventually get it together and become two of the most important punk bands of the 70's.
It taught me to be more forgiving in judging new bands, and to listen a little more closely.
And, indeed, in 1975 Blondie sounded terrible. Incredibly loud, out of tune, often off-beat, yelling punk rock; nothing whatever like the disco-y melodic sound they later became famous for.
Of course, all the bands at CBGB sounded differently in that incredibly small, narrow, venue, a former flophouse, where the floor was always strewn with broken beer bottles and puddles of vomit.
The Palace Bar (CBGB) was the largest. Over 165 feet long and 25 feet wide, just a big old bar with beer signs lighting the overhead. The "Palace" stank from dirty old men, vomit, and urine. When I took over the place I had to fumigate as we reinforced the old bar so you couldn't see the warp
That first night, their performances were so well received that we agreed to have "The Patti Smith Group" four nights a week, two sets a night, till further notice. Well, they stayed seven weeks!! Clive Davis and staff came down several times and eventually signed the band right out of CBGB's. The performances were truly a wonderful experience for the staff and myself. The band was great, Patti was great; every show was special. Their audiences, because of her notoriety, were composed of writers, artists, musicians, and other celebrities (all fans). It was a most unusual crowd ranging from punks to professors. The audience reflected "HER". Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsburg, and Allen Lanier from the "Blue Oyster Cult"(the 3 A's) were here repeatedly as well as Lou Reed, John Cale and many others. It must have been inspiring for Patti and the band and again I must say, it sure was exciting for all of us.
Patti Smith remains the rock artist I feel most personally affected by. That Lenny Kaye had been active in sf fandom and so we had several personal friends in common, leading us to meet at a couple of small parties, didn't harm that.
Reading Kristal's potted history, I'm struck by the fact that I've been misremembering for years (a not uncommon experience). For decades I'd displaced musical memories of 1975-6 onto 1977. How silly of me. I was sixteen years old. How unpredictable I'd be influenced by music I discovered then, eh?
(For the record, I was also highly influenced by the Beatles, Sixties rock, jazz of all sorts, classical music, folk music of various breeds, blues, and even, eventually, Big Band of the Forties, among other flavors; like most everything else, my taste in music is very eclectic.)
WHEN I WAS GOING TO CBGB in 1975-7, seeing groups such as Television, Patti Smith Group, Blondie, Talking Heads, and The Ramones, I never dreamt the city would, in the 21st Century, name a street after Joey Ramone.
Read The Rest if you want to beat on the brat with a baseball bat. (Special Amygdala no-prize to the first person who posts what "CBGB" stands for.)
A Japanese rocket carrying two spy satellites meant to monitor North Korea failed to reach orbit Saturday and had to be destroyed, space officials said.
The launch of the domestically designed and made H2-A rocket, the workhorse of Japan's space program, had been delayed three times since Sept. 10 because of technical glitches.
National broadcaster NHK reported one of the rocket's engines had malfunctioned, prompting the space agency to order the rocket blown up 10 minutes after lift-off.
Ernst Stavro Blofeld was successfully launching satellites from Japan in the Sixties. Has Japan considered using an outside contractor?
I expect the major problem is that Japan is not making sufficient use of white cats.
Read The Rest Scale: #2 out of 5. Number 3 has been dropped into the pool with piranhas.
I WISH FRIENDS OF MINE WOULD QUITdying. KIM Campbell, a cancer survivor for many years now, was cremated on Tuesday, November 25. A huge force in British sf fandom, more responsible than anyone else for the success of the bid for the most recent British World Science Fiction Convention bid, KIM was one of the strongest personalities I've known.
LETTER FROM BAGHDAD by George Packer in the newNew Yorker is rather extraordinary, even in context of that magazine's tradition of extremely long in-depth examinations of a subject. Not that it's a John McPhee style examination that turns a seemingly dull topic into one of startling fascination.
It's a very long George Packer piece that's worth reading every bit of, as it brings us close-up detail of many people's lives in Baghad, looking back at the failed planning for the occupation and bringing us up to the present. It's a must-read. Some particularly wise words:
“Iraq needs to be liberated—liberated from big plans,” Salamé said. “Every time people mentioned it in the last few years, it was to connect it to big ideas—the war against W.M.D.s, solving the Arab-Israeli conflict, the war against terrorism, a model of democracy. That’s why all these mistakes are made. They’re made because Iraq is always, in someone’s mind, the first step to something else.”
In our last conversation in Washington, Drew Erdmann said that it made no sense to claim any certainty about how Iraq will emerge from this ordeal. “I’m very cautious about dealing with anyone talking about Iraq who’s absolutely sure one way or the other,” he said.
DOES HEMINGWAY HAVE RECIPES?Ideofact presents unusual turkey recipes from the notebooks of F. Scott Fitzgerald. No, really.
1. Turkey Cocktail: To one large turkey add one gallon of vermouth and a demijohn of angostura bitters. Shake.
3. Turkey and Water: Take one turkey and one pan of water. Heat the latter to the boiling point and then put in the refrigerator. When it has jelled, drown the turkey in it. Eat. In preparing this recipe, it is best to have a few ham sandwiches around in case things go wrong.
6. Stolen Turkey: Walk quickly from the market, and, if accosted, remark with a laugh that it had just flown into your arms and you hadn't noticed it. Then drop the turkey with the white of one egg -- well, anyhow, beat it.
Quite long profile, quoting both negative and positive, by uber-Washingtonian, Sally Quinn.
Someone should write a history of the interaction of US foreign policy with slippery Middle Eastern businessmen: Chalabi, Manuchar Gorbanifar, Adnan Kashoggi, and so on. It's quite a story.
Read The Rest: if you want a potpourri of contradictory anecdotes about Chalabi.
A scientist claiming to have invented a device which produces orgasms at the touch of a button can't find women to help him conduct trials into it.
The implant, inserted under the skin at the base of the spine, triggers a reflex response to produce sensation.
Dr Stuart Meloy, from North Carolina, told New Scientist: "I thought people would be beating my door down."
Must. Not. Touch. Line.
Strength... failing. Must... quote... more.
Dr Meloy - originally a pain specialist - stumbled on the concept when he inserted a pacemaker-like device under the skin in a bid to alleviate severe back pain in a patient.
The pronounced side-effects of the electrical current it delivered prompted him to diversify into a different field of research.
He patented the idea of using the technique to treat female sexual dysfunction.
The device works because of a natural reflex in the body which produces an orgasm.
MORE BAD SANTA. I knew this film was directed by Terry Zwigoff, director of the very wonderful Ghost World and of Crumb. I hadn't known it had a re-write from Joel and Ethan Coen, who together are one of my absolutely favorite set of film-makers, and who are also executive producers here. My interest in seeing this film continues to grow.
Bad Santa," for good or ill, has been demographically engineered for the smallest interest group in America: those who hate Christmas.
[...]
As for the rest of you: Hello, that's why they have multiplexes. It's called, like, make another choice.
The joy of "Bad Santa" is that its Santa is really bad, continually bad, totally bad, but also humanly bad.
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At the same time, it's not at all sentimental about its bad hero. He's not a cute, "outrageous" curmudgeon, like an Archie Bunker. He's banally bad, vile and scuzzy; he has hooch-halitosis and stains under his armpits. His signature chant isn't "Ho, ho, ho," it's "Me, me, me." He's so bad, he might give bad a bad name. He's white-trashy, drunken, abusive, profane, sexually pathological, tied so tight in his own knot of self-hatred he's hardly recognizable as human -- that is, unless you look in the mirror. I can't quote a single one of his lines because I just checked The Washington Post's dash drawer, and we're a little short today. Plenty of semicolons and umlauts and accents in there for the foreign correspondents, but not nearly enough dashes for me to quote a line like: "Kid, why don't you get the -- -- out of here before I -- -- kick your -- -- ," and that's where I run out of dashes.
[...]
The movie is -- how can I say this? -- funny as hell. It's like an old Mad magazine "Scenes We'd Like to See" put together by someone on crystal meth, with a vicious streak, an existentialist streak and no mercy anywhere in his soul and only the tiniest flinch at the end, which is probably, sigh, the best way to end. Bad Santa, at his baddest, just doesn't give (oh, look, some extra dashes!) a -- -- about anything. Put that in your chimney and smoke it, it seems to be saying to the world.
"WITLESS" is what the usually thoughtful Chris Bertram calls people who name Lord Of The Rings as their favorite work of fiction. Crooked Timber readers leap in to largely dance a dance of agreement in their comments. Tolkien is just for children, you know, and isn't literature.
This is the sort of silliness that breeds an equally damaging counter-reaction by some genre aficionados that if good stuff isn't literature, "literature" must be bad. It's not a terribly beneficial interaction or perceptive analysis on either side.
Still not as common as Civil War re-enactors (there are an estimated 45,000 of those), a growing number of combat buffs are spending their weekends recreating classic battles of World War II — complete with convoys of heavy artillery that were present at the real thing. Membership in the biggest vehicle-collectors' group, the Military Vehicle Preservation Association, based in Independence, Mo., has doubled since 1991, to 10,000. And Americans are not the only ones taking part: the Invicta Military Vehicle Preservation Society in Britain has 1,200 members, while the Japan Classic Jeep Association, founded in 1983, is now 120 people strong.
These days, you can even buy a tank online, through sites like www.tanksforsale .co.uk, based in Britain. (Among the current offerings: a GAZ-69, Soviet-era jeep-like vehicle and a Vzor 77 Dana tank.) The artillery is frequently Soviet or Eastern European, but Allied and German hardware sometime turns up. (Because they are scarcer, German trucks and tanks generally fetch far more than their Allied counterparts.) An Abbott self-propelled gun tank advertised on www.awickedgift.co.uk had "one careful owner," the British Army.
Fans of military vehicles say a boom in patriotism is, in part, behind the increasing popularity of halftracks and T16 Bren gun carriers for home use. Kay Hinga, manager of the Military Vehicle Preservation Association, points out that while prices for some combat vehicles are high — a Porsche-designed, German Tiger 2 tank is worth more than $1 million — many are pretty cheap, at least compared with the prices of vintage cars. They are also far less costly to get ready for the road. You can pick up a fully restored American Sherman M-4 tank for about $90,000; one in need of restoration goes for about $60,000. An added bonus: "They're easy to work on, and they don't need a high-gloss finish," Ms. Hinga said.
I'd make car-detailing jokes if I knew the faintest thing about the subject. Here's something I can get behind, though:
The best part about re-enacting, he said: "We get to do all this neat stuff without worrying about getting killed."
THE PERIODIC TABLE OF BLOGGERS. I'm in the "politics" section (colored yellow), on the left side with Atrios, Calpundit, Josh Marshall, Daily Kos, and Matthew Yglesias.
Interestingly, Atrios and Daily Kos have never blogrolled me, Calpundit dropped me at some point, and Marshall has always had only a handful of blogs rolled, anyway.
I've tended to assume that the reason for my not being listed by these gentlemen, and dropped or not listed by a number of other prominent lefty blogs (Charles Dodgson, Crooked Timber, TalkLeft, Body and Soul, for example), is that I'm considered insufficiently pure in my leftyness, but, of course, it's entirely possible that it's because I'm boring, or blog too much about Buffy, Tolkien, science fiction, comics, and other triviality, or, of course, there need be no affirmative reason whatever.
It's always interesting how people's perspectives vary, however.
ONLY ONE MEASLY THANKSGIVING? The Confederacy of the Iroquis Nations had nine, as described in their Constitution:
103. It shall be the duty of the appointed managers of the Thanksgiving festivals to do all that is needed for carrying out the duties of the occasions.
The recognized festivals of Thanksgiving shall be the Midwinter Thanksgiving, the Maple or Sugar-making Thanksgiving, the Raspberry Thanksgiving, the Strawberry Thanksgiving, the Cornplanting Thanksgiving, the Corn Hoeing Thanksgiving, the Little Festival of Green Corn, the Great Festival of Ripe Corn and the complete Thanksgiving for the Harvest.
Each nation's festivals shall be held in their Long Houses.
I'd read references to this document all my life, but never before actually read it. It's long, and it's fascinating, partially because from a modern American perspective, it's so bloody weird in many ways. We're always told about how it influenced the Founding Fathers. Perhaps so. But not with stuff like this:
We place at the top of the Tree of the Long Leaves an Eagle who is able to see afar. If he sees in the distance any evil approaching or any danger threatening he will at once warn the people of the Confederacy.
[...]
4. You, Adodarhoh, and your thirteen cousin Lords, shall faithfully keep the space about the Council Fire clean and you shall allow neither dust nor dirt to accumulate. I lay a Long Wing before you as a broom. As a weapon against a crawling creature I lay a staff with you so that you may thrust it away from the Council Fire. If you fail to cast it out then call the rest of the United Lords to your aid.
[...]
63. Should a great calamity threaten the generations rising and living of the Five United Nations, then he who is able to climb to the top of the Tree of the Great Long Leaves may do so. When, then, he reaches the top of the tree he shall look about in all directions, and, should he see that evil things indeed are approaching, then he shall call to the people of the Five United Nations assembled beneath the Tree of the Great Long Leaves and say: "A calamity threatens your happiness."
Then shall the Lords convene in council and discuss the impending evil. When all the truths relating to the trouble shall be fully known and found to be truths, then shall the people seek out a Tree of Ka-hon-ka-ah-go-nah, [ a great swamp Elm ], and when they shall find it they shall assemble their heads together and lodge for a time between its roots. Then, their labors being finished, they may hope for happiness for many days after.
One fascinating aspect is the role of women:
19. A bunch of a certain number of shell (wampum) strings each two spans in length shall be given to each of the female families in which the Lordship titles are vested. The right of bestowing the title shall be hereditary in the family of the females legally possessing the bunch of shell strings and the strings shall be the token that the females of the family have the proprietary right to the Lordship title for all time to come, subject to certain restrictions hereinafter mentioned.
20. If any Confederate Lord neglects or refuses to attend the Confederate Council, the other Lords of the Nation of which he is a member shall require their War Chief to request the female sponsors of the Lord so guilty of defection to demand his attendance of the Council. If he refuses, the women holding the title shall immediately select another candidate for the title.
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21. If at any time it shall be manifest that a Confederate Lord has not in mind the welfare of the people or disobeys the rules of this Great Law, the men or women of the Confederacy, or both jointly, shall come to the Council and upbraid the erring Lord through his War Chief. If the complaint of the people through the War Chief is not heeded the first time it shall be uttered again and then if no attention is given a third complaint and warning shall be given. If the Lord is contumacious the matter shall go to the council of War Chiefs. The War Chiefs shall then divest the erring Lord of his title by order of the women in whom the titleship is vested. When the Lord is deposed the women shall notify the Confederate Lords through their War Chief, and the Confederate Lords shall sanction the act. The women will then select another of their sons as a candidate and the Lords shall elect him. Then shall the chosen one be installed by the Installation Ceremony.
When a Lord is to be deposed, his War Chief shall address him as follows:
"So you, __________, disregard and set at naught the warnings of your women relatives. So you fling the warnings over your shoulder to cast them behind you. "Behold the brightness of the Sun and in the brightness of
