this just in..

if we weren't alive right now, we'd be in real trouble.

on the other hand, we'd be dead.
or pre-born.

now we're post-born.

free me up, yo.

i'm young, white and dangerous.
can you tell?
people often think i'm a G.

really.
most definitely.

break 'em off some.
break 'em off.

at least i'm not chicken boti.
pakwan rules.

even if they're a bit agitated.

castor oil rocks.

bullet in the head.
that is.

look at me before you go downtown.
and then you'll realize the error of your ways.

don't threaten me.
uncut.

bijou philips is out.

new albums i'm listening to today:

The Beatles "Let it Be...Naked" - i like it better, more cohesive, the album as a whole works now and it never did before. good sound quality, you feel closer to the music, definitely more raw. the only version i didn't like as much was "get back" because it seems like it cuts off rather abruptly and too soon.

pearl jam "lost dogs" (epic) - eh, whatever. i used to buy their bootlegs when they first came out in 91-93..so i knew most of the songs i'd even want to hear from that era. i stopped buying pearl jam records after "vitalogy."

joss stone "the soul sessions" - very young white girl from england plays with old bluesmen, another one of those "i can't believe this girl is white" albums (see amy winehouse).� interestingly enough, she does the most unlikely covers, like white stripes' "fell in love with a boy" (gender changed), works with questlove from the roots, john sebastian's "i had a dream," aretha franklin's "all the king's horses." "For the love of you" by the Isley brothers, "some kind of wonderful by john ellison, working with betty wright.
hmmm, you know what, this sucks. fuck joss stone.


wow, a TON of big new releases for christmas have arrived.
besides above, new tori amos best of, new kid rock, britney spears, blink-182, red hot chili peppers greatest hits, jimi hendrix's "Live At Berkeley, new Flaming Lips EP sounds good, Bruce Springsteen Greatest Hits, Cyndi Lauper's new one, G-Unit's new one.
all pretty much shit, no?

"Show me your soul" P. Diddy w/ Pharrell Williams, Loon & Lenny Kravitz. - hmm. a bunch of rich guys getting together sort of trying to rock out. yeah. fuck you.

Important Random thought
i have an unwritten personal rule that i can't wear the same outfit within the last ..mmm, i'd say at least two weeks, but more like 3-4. i have enough clothes..i should say, i have enough shirts and corresponding jackets to change it up. i definitely need more pants, though.
don't you agree?
we all need somebody to have pants on.

re: the chili peppers: this is basically a best of of only the WB years, nothing from the hillel slovak era at all. amazing how many hits they've had. they hold up pretty well, actually. no they don't. the chili peppers are kind of stupid.
however, i still hold "blood sugar sex magik" (especially cool because of the spelling, right?) or whatever it's called, as being memorable, mainly because it represents a specific time in my life, my last year in college at michigan state university 199?.
two new tracks, "fortune faded" and "save the population." opens with lyrics "history so strong." wow, these tracks seem quite half-assed. bad. flat production. jesus, this is WEAK. both of them just suck.

new britney - track 4 "breathe on me" seems destined for the clubs, kind of reminds me of kylie minogue.

having two lattes today makes me feel like i'm on drugs or something.

did you know apple cider is for idiots? that's what ken nordine says.

my bathtub hurts me.

Send a very special email before you kick off

This is weird


Song currently playing: "Fire Within" by Magic Sound Fabric, from Uplift Drift

i also watched the film 28 Days Later --- pretty good premise, pretty good film for the most part, degenerates badly in the last third, i thought.

but still, a good film and a REALLY good idea. i had so many more questions after seeing it, that's for sure. that needed to be made into a book.
or maybe it's from a book, hey?

chunna.

timmmmiii

FFFriday #6

Fab Five Friday (How Now Brown Cow Edition)

1. The Rapture & Out-Hud at the Great American, 11.13
Dance party USA, even if they sometimes sound like Gang of Four with techno beats. They are still solid live. Plus I loved the loner sax player, who looked like he was having the time of his life doing nifty dance steps with just his instrument. Plus you know your band is onto something when the girls are grasping onto your lead singer's pant legs by show's end.
As for Out-Hud, i really dig their eclectic sound, a clever mix of electronic with organic instrumentation... even if that over-dancing keyboard guy Nic was talking shit about non-dancing SF crowds. "at least in sacramento we dance." yeah, yeah, what a great joke. never heard that one before. ha.
i especially dug the smallish girl who plays a strange-looking cello (it had no body), sings and also plays guitar on a few songs. damn. she's like, talented and stuff.

2. Playing the Hives' "Die, All Right!" really fucking loud three times in a row because I'm all alone in the warehouse space right now and i can.

3. Yarbrough & Peoples - good name.

4. Television Marquee Moon (Remastered reissue) - Somehow, I managed to not listen to them for many years. But now that i have, it's clear how influential they were. The new version sounds better than ever, the packaging is great, and features several alternate takes. They were so ahead of their time. It's crazy this came out in '77.

5. Five newish albums with potential:
a. Eltro Past & Present Futurists (absolutely kosher) - the Notwist meets To rococo Rot (i.e. IDM indie pop) with evocative female vocals.
b. Her Space Holiday Young Machines (mush) - sort of in The Postal Service vein, wry lyrics with electronic beats. but more morose.
c. My Favorite Happiest Days Of Our Lives (Remixes) - '80s-juiced Roxy Music-esqe sweeping pop. I like many of the remixes better than the originals.
d. Viva Voce Lovers Lead The Way! (asthmatic kitty) - sometimes it seems like my iTunes has a mind of its own. it's been playing the shit out of this album lately. but damn if this isn't some breezy, yet delightfully brooding, murky psych pop.
e. Finishing School Destination Girl (telegraph) - This is the solo album from Sasha Bell, the vocalist from The Ladybug Transistor. It's not that far removed from early 10,000 Maniacs style with baroque strings, melancholy vocals and feathery beats.


-1. Noticing two entries contain exclamation points. Are exclamation points becoming played out?

tP

FFFriday

Fab Five Friday #5
+"No Pressure/Back On Schedule� Edition


1. Clear Horizon "Clear Horizon" (Kranky, out 11.18) - Damn, I love white noise. i just love to be ensconced in crackly sounds that lull me into a trance-like state. The press release says �Clear Horizon is the culmination of two years of tape-trading across the Atlantic between Jessica Bailiff and David Pierce.� I say, think of a stripped-down My Bloody Valentine, with serious white noise guitar tonal immersion offset by ghostly vocals and threaded acoustic strings. Kinda like being underwater when you're obviously not...or are you?

2. Sugarplum Fairies (starfish) �Introspective Raincoat Student Music� � an apt title for an album that manages to be both fresh and familiar at the same time. I love Silvia Rider�s whispery yet biting vocals and imaginative lyrics, plus the dreamy slide guitar-playing and odd arrangements. Some of the best tracks on the album are available for free download via amazon (I�m sure you can find it).

3. Clem Snide "A Beautiful EP" (spinart) - they do a cover of Christina Aguilera's "beautiful,� which manages to be both snide and sincere at the same time. Another track, "Mike Kalinsky" is about a kid who has asthma, always misses school but still does better on tests than everyone else. Nearly every song on here makes me giggle. And it�s hard to be both consistently funny and still write good songs.

4. Mando Diao "Bring 'em In" (Mute) � Garage rock from Sweden that�s really solid. I especially like the production, stripped down and all fuzzy. It�s got a very go-go '60s vibe but still manages to rock out at the same time.

5. Surprises!
- The State of California sent me my tax return the other day. Now I can buy that babushka I�ve always wanted.
- Sleep. Me, the notorious non-sleeper (it takes up too much of my time) has been hitting the sack by 10 p.m. almost every night this week and getting up by 7 a.m. It may have something to do with my super-hectic October, in which I averaged about 2 hours a night.
- The cold/drizzly/cloudy weather. Now it truly feels like autumn. I just love the crispy element of the air this time of year. And the best part is, no worries about snow!


NEGATIVES
-1. The Tropic of Capricorn. It sucks. The Tropic Of Cancer is so much better.

(BONUS - WEB EXCLUSIVE)-2. Shaving my pubic hair. OK, I�ve officially learned my lesson. No more �What if I did this?� thoughts in the shower. Now I know why women get theirs waxed or use Nair. That shit itches something fierce.


one love, one love, accept most
timmmmiiiii

My Name is PRINCE...and I'm here to talk to you about Jehovah...

Jessica Lynch Criticizes U.S. Accounts of Her Ordeal
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK, NY Times
Published: November 7, 2003

rather than reiterate what is being said here, i felt it important to add this story directly how it runs in today's NY Times, which says that Jessica Lynch believes the Pentagon used her story for jingoistic fervor. TP

--In her first public statements since her rescue in Iraq, Jessica Lynch criticized the military for exaggerating accounts of her rescue and re-casting her ordeal as a patriotic fable.

Asked by the ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer if the military's portrayal of the rescue bothered her, Ms. Lynch said: "Yeah, it does. It does that they used me as a way to symbolize all this stuff. Yeah, it's wrong," according to a partial transcript of the interview to be broadcast on Tuesday.

After months of retreating from the news media, Ms. Lynch will be a ubiquitous presence next week. In addition to her appearance on ABC, she will be on the cover of Time magazine, and NBC will broadcast a movie based on an Iraqi's account of her ordeal. On Tuesday, the book publisher Knopf will release an account of her experience, "I Am a Soldier, Too," written with her cooperation by a former reporter for The New York Times, Rick Bragg.

The book and the movie are unrelated and tell different versions of Ms. Lynch's story, but the publisher has timed the book to capitalize on publicity from the television movie.

The book has already added another, lurid indignity to the public accounts of her capture. It reports that Ms. Lynch's military doctors found injuries consistent with sexual assault and unlikely to have resulted from the Humvee crash that caused her other wounds, suggesting that she was raped after her capture. Ms. Lynch, who was unconscious immediately after the crash, does not remember any such assault, according to people who have talked to her and read the book. Those details of the book's contents were reported yesterday in The New York Daily News.

In the book and in the interviews, Ms. Lynch says others' accounts of her heroism often left her feeling hurt and ashamed because of what she says was overstatement.

At first, a military spokesman in Iraq told journalists that American soldiers had exchanged fire with Iraqis during the rescue, without adding that resistance was minimal. Then the military released a dramatic, green-tinted, night-vision video of the mission. Soon news organizations were repeating reports, attributed to anonymous American officials, that Ms. Lynch had heroically resisted her capture, emptying her weapon at her attackers.

But subsequent investigations determined that Ms. Lynch was injured by the crash of her vehicle, her weapon jammed before she could fire, the Iraqi doctors treated her kindly, and the hospital was already in friendly hands when her rescuers arrived.

Asked how she felt about the reports of her heroism, Ms. Lynch told Ms. Sawyer, "It hurt in a way that people would make up stories that they had no truth about. Only I would have been able to know that, because the other four people on my vehicle aren't here to tell the story. So I would have been the only one able to say, yeah, I went down shooting. But I didn't."

And asked about reports that the military exaggerated the danger of the rescue mission, Ms. Lynch said, "Yeah, I don't think it happened quite like that," although she added that in that context anybody would have approached the hospital well-armed. She continued: "I don't know why they filmed it, or why they say the things they, you know, all I know was that I was in that hospital hurting. I needed help."

Lt. Col. Rivers Johnson, a spokesman for the Department of Defense, declined to comment on Ms. Lynch's views. But he said, "Essentially, the mission to rescue Jessica Lynch demonstrated America's resolve to account for all of its missing service members." He added that the rescue had been conducted under the appropriate procedures for a fluid situation like the war in Iraq. "You always plan for the worst."

Ms. Lynch also disputed statements by Mohammed Odeh al-Rehaief, the Iraqi lawyer, that he saw her captors slap her.

"From the time I woke up in that hospital, no one beat me, no one slapped me, no one, nothing," Ms. Lynch told Diane Sawyer, adding, "I'm so thankful for those people, because that's why I'm alive today."

Jeff Coplon, who helped Mr. Rehaief write his book, "Because Each Life is Precious," said it was possible that both he and Ms. Lynch were telling the truth in their divergent accounts.

"One of the questions that could arise in the wake of this kind of trauma is that someone could believe they remember everything and their memory could still be incomplete," Mr. Coplon said.

...
Who will win?

it's become increasingly difficult to tell who will win the democratic presidential nomination.
my top contenders at the moment would be:

Wesley Clark
Howard Dean
Bob Kerry

Edwards? whatever.
Sharpton? yeah, he sure is funny. ha.
Lieberman? gross. fuck this so-called "democrat" a censorship-happy fool who will likely appeal to older voters, which sucks since they vote the most consistently.

let's see, who else is there.
Braun? yeah right. whatever.
Gephardt? could there be anyone who comes off more wimpy? maybe lieberman, but that's about it.

shit, that's eight. off the top of my head, that's not too bad but i can't recall who the ninth is.

ah yes, dennis kucinich, who is by far the most extreme, despite being from ohio. which is funny. he was the youngest mayor of cleveland ever. i think he was like 31 when he was elected. which is quite amazing, i must say.

anyway...i dig kucinich's beliefs but he has no chance. plus a bad name.

kerry - i guess i don't understand why people dislike him, since he's a war vet, is very smart and has a longtime political career. maybe that's part of his problem, the longtime politician shit. or maybe it's because he reminds many people of frankenstein or at least, herman munster aka fred gwynne (whom i loved so much in "pet semetary"). regardless, kerry is a longshot at best.

if the old guard dem establishment gets leiberman the ticket, we're doomed for sure. that's such a bad ticket. plus the whole jewish thing won't play well, i don't think. obviously i have nothing against the jewish people but we're talking election time here folks.

anyway...clark. though one article i read about him in newsweek gave me pause...since then i've read an interview with him in rolling stone, listened to an interview he did on NPR and read soemthing else about him online, though i can't recall the source.
he seems pretty level-headed, has a lifetime of military experience and can think on his feet. it's unfortunate he joined the campaign so late but i still think he's a viable candidate...or in other words, one of the better chances of beating bush, because obviously dubya can't compete on the military thing, having skipped out on his fucking time in the national guard, for christ's sake.
yet, military people love him. it's amazing to me. he was more of a draft dodger than clinton ever was, yet somehow he's our military president. boggles my mind but people are fucking idiots after all.

there's something about Clark that i like, his discipline, his confidence, his belief (seemingly) to speak what he thinks.
of course, howard dean does that as well but there's something about him that seems a little too brash...then again, we need brashness to defeat the unbelievably brash and lying GOP, so that could work. and fuck, dean has raised a LOT of money, more so than i would have thought. now he's thinking about dropping out of the election public funds so he's not subject to limiting rules made by campaign finance laws. don't get me wrong, the campaign finance game is sooo fucked up right now, but that's not dean's fault. and when the bushies consistently flout the laws when it comes to raising money (gee, doesn't this story sound familiar? yet it seems sooooo different when the GOP does it compared to when clinton did it, huh? oh that's right, that's because republicans don't have to actually follow the law - they just do what they want).
so i say to dean, fucking drop out. basically the finance laws limit the amount of money you can spend at like $47 million, i believe, which are matched by taxpayer funds. so dean is saying "fuck that, we're going to need more to defeat bush" who long ago dropped out of the finance limit because he had no intention of only spending that piddily amount of money.

never mind the fact that money is what it takes to win the presidency these days. we all know that.

some people are criticizing dean already, because he stated early on in his campaign that he was going to limit himself to those finance law funds. but clearly he, nor anyone else, could have forseen how much money he's actually raised.
beat the fucking bush's, at all costs. we need to.

but getting back to my point, i just think that the GOP will destroy Dean if he gets the nomination. then again, i could be wrong and hope i am.
i am just so afraid of a wimpy lieberman or gephardt nomination. that would soooo be the wrong call.
if it was such the right call then we wouldn't even be discussing this, since Gore would have been president.

now of course i am a firm believer that gore was hoodwinked out of the presidency for sure. and the media helped play a role, by prematurely declaring bush as the winner before it was completely determined to be true.
that exit polling bullshit is such a joke, btw, but whatever.

but part of the problem may have been that bush came off as a guy's guy, the kind of dude you could hang out with on a weekend to get fucked up, snort a few lines, smoke some kind bud and get in the car and hop on down to the next bar. ok, maybe ol' bush didn't smoke that much kind bud, but that's the least harmful of the three things i mentioned, so big fucking deal.
ha
anyway....bush came off as the affable partyboy pal, the guy with the gregarious personality who acted stupid even though he wasn't actually stupid.
i certainly don't think bush is stupid, more evil than stupid, and with a clearcut neoconservative agenda, despite the fact that he labeled himself as a "compassionate conservative" while campaigning.
it's amazing to me how quickly people have forgotten what bush supposedly stood for compared to what he actually does stand for.
people are sheep though, big surprise, so no point in even arguing about that.

what all this means is that we need somebody that can take on bush tit for tat, that can roll with the punches (and there will be many many punches - get ready for fox news to go on the offensive the minute the nomination is secured by one of these fuckers) and stand firm in their convictions.

and while i praise dean for bringing some much-needed bristling commentary to the forum, i hesitate a bit because he may just end up alienating too many people and thereby once again handing the presidency to the GOP by default.
just sucks so much.

i mean, astoundingly, every week comes a new revelation from this government that literally makes me turn cold with fear. that bill just signed into law by Bush, the one that bans partial birth abortions. well, that bill leaves no room for extenuating circumstances, say if the woman is raped or is in clear life-threatening danger.
within hours after the bill was signed into law, a federal judge declared that the law was likely unconstitutional and needed to be decided by the courts before going into effect.
within another day, two more courts had ruled the same way, thereby covering most of the states in the union.

yet, i read a story this morning that says the department of justice (lead by that fucking foolish bible-toting lunatic john asscroft) would enforce this law anyway...even though the law has already been struck down by THREE federal judges. apparently, normal laws don't apply to the dept. of justice, the very same people that are supposed to fucking uphold the law of the land, no matter what!
there isn't supposed to be any "interpretation" of the law by Justice. that's for the courts to decide, hello!

makes me so angry. jesus. now we can routinely flout whatever laws we deem to be wrong.
so if i'm elected AG (it could happen) and wanted to openly smoke marijuana because i thought the law was wrong, i could. let out all the convicted nonviolent drug offenders because i believe the law is "morally wrong under god's eyes." yeah, ok. right. would never happen.
yet somehow republicans seem to disavow that when it comes to shit THEY believe to be God-inspired.

does anybody recall the separation of church and state? that was like part of the fucking point of separating from england in the first place. does anybody seem to recall that? no, apparently not.

this is the first in a long series of rants that are itching to emerge from my brain.

all i can say is.....Democrats. get your shit together. a recent poll just came out that a majority of americans, for the first time in like forever, are unhappy with the iraq thing and unhappy with bush. it's not a very big margin but it proves that people are fucking fed up with this idiot.
but the only way to get rid of this idiot is to come back hard and strong to defeat the infidels aka bushies & GOP cohorts.

and if you think people like gephardt and lieberman are going to do it, you'd be wrong.

so,
GO Dean! (though i'm still not sure what to think of the whole confederate flag flap, i still dig what he has to say and love the fact he's stirring up the pie)

GO Clark! (though you need to come up with a more concrete platform and get out there more, you're losing people because you haven't really done anything to distinguish yourself...but i think you've got a good shot)

Go Kerry! (because i really do think he has a lot to say and could be an effective leader but his window of opportunity is beginning to look like it's closing)

and everyone else...drop the fuck out of the race so we can have some real debates. sniping about each other only serves to confuse and fragment your potential voters.
this means you lieberman, you stupid schlub. give up censor boy!

and now, i must move forward.
fuck you and your haikus.
and those are the facts, jack.