Rowhouse Logic - Breathtaking Inanity

I’m taking some more time off. Nothing serious - just a loss of words. I’ll return on October 1st. I hope to see you then.

Here’s a tune from the fine album pictured above.

I thought I would come out of my little hiatus to note that this blog is one year old today. Here is the first post (a test) as it looked then. There have been 862 posts since then, though not all of them by me. That is all. Carry on.

Postscript: The title doesn’t really mean anything. It’s just a tribute to the Cowboy King, without whom none of this would be possible. Speaking of the Cowboy King, you should go read this.

Josh Marshall has the best post-speech analysis I’ve read so far. Read it and weep.

How’s that for stunning analysis on my part? Go to hell. I’m on vacation, damnit!

Another night. If you look away, I’ve found, it’s not so bad. Good night.

And here I was thinking the fucker couldn’t comunicate a damn thing even remotely worthwhile. As it turns out I was dead wrong. Shame on me. (Via Reuters)

U.S. President George W. Bush writes a note to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a Security Council meeting at the 2005 World Summit and 60th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York September 14, 2005. World leaders are exploring ways to revitalize the United Nations at a summit on Wednesday but their blueprint falls short of Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s vision of freedom from want, persecution and war.

(via half the damn world, but here’s a link.)

On a side note, that “freedom from want, persecution and war” business is something our civilization might want to get around to one of these days.

Shit, I didn’t mean to say that. Oops! I hate to get all progressive on you bastards at the expense of a funny. Let’s just call it a disorder of mine and look the other way for a second. Just a nervous twitch, a pimple and a nasty case of body odor - nothing more. It’s not polite to stare and I’ll be better in the morning, I swear.

After all, why in Heaven’s name should anybody get worked up over “freedom from want, persecution and war?” It’s not like there’s anything the fucking free market won’t sort out one of these damn days. Hell, I bet you’ll even enjoy the sort! I’m sure you’ll come out the other end just fine and smelling like roses baby.

Freedom Roses! Better by the dozen, and still 100% free of compassion and human dignity.

More importantly, I need to take a leak. Pardon.

Starting today, I’m on vacation. Not one of those nice ones with a beach or a ship or rum drinks with cute little umbrellas. Just a stress vacation - likely a somewhat disorganized ramble around town.

That means I have time to actually write something here, but I won’t - I can’t. I’m not sure how so many seem so capable of going on as if nothing has happened. Until I can do the same, I don’t see any real reason for me to participate. Not here.

I’m going to go back to my disorganized ramble of a vacation now. I think a big roasted pork sandwich and a lager would really hit the spot. I think I’ll go take care of that.

Very busy and sad times. I’ll catch up with you later in the week when I’m able. Enjoy your week.

If you haven’t read it yet, have a look at the story from this morning’s Inquirer titled Failure at Every Turn. I read it some time yesterday afternoon, but still don’t have my head wrapped around it sufficiently to make any sort of useful commentary. In less genteel times, I’d imagine we’d be seeing pitch forks and torches.

Not now, though - God forbid! In a day and age where the words “accountability” and “blame” are considered dirtier than calling your mother a pigfucker, I suppose we’ll just have to resign ourselves to quiet desperation and looking the other way. I’d like to say our society was nice while it lasted, but I think that’s probably just false sentimentality on my part.

I won’t say a thing. This is the last blues Coltrane ever recorded in a studio. Enjoy and feel it, if you can. Click here to listen or download.

My wife finds it odd that I don’t have an alphabetical blogroll, and it pisses her off quite a bit. The blogroll is random. Each time you visit this site, the order of the blogroll changes. She likes it better now that she understands the random concept. She was concerned that readers would miss that aspect of the site, and therefore, miss out on learning about some wonderful sites. My wife and I urge you to click on the first, the last, and the middle.

Right now, I have some more important links occupying the top of my sidebar. Take note and give what you can, where you feel you can.

This is so random and so drunken Saturday night. Enjoy! Don’t let the bastards grind you down.

I can’t imagine what I could say about this. Good god.

While FEMA director Michael D. Brown (Brownie) is no longer in charge of the relief effort on the Gulf Coast, he is still in charge of FEMA. What does this mean? Well, for one thing, should there be a major earthquake in Los Angles this evening, Michael Brown will still be the guy calling the shots at FEMA. Comforting, isn’t it? With that, I’m going to go up on my roof and get drunk. Have a nice day!

I’m not going to say much about the tune Malaguena as it’s fairly straight forward. It was recorded by the Pete La Roca Quartet in either 1964 or 1965 (I’ve seen both) for the Pete La Roca album Basra, which is only available by import from Japan. The band features La Roca on drums, Joe Henderson on tenor saxophone, Steve Swallow on bass and Steve Kuhn on piano. As I think you’ll hear the tune is a wonderful vehicle for Henderson. Enjoy. Click here to play or download. I’ll give you a jelly bean if you can name the scale or mode Joe leans most heavily on.

Most of us probably associate the song Summertime with a grainy recording played over a cheesy lemonade commercial, featuring a bucolic scene of some sloping Midwestern field, graced by a grand shade tree.

A lovely image to be sure, but things are not always as we would like them to be. Life is often more brutal than any of us would care to imagine. This is John Coltrane’s performance of Summertime, recorded in 1961 from his album My Favorite Things. Download or listen here. I don’t mean to imply that there is a lack of joy in this recording, only that I’m not feeling it now. I hear anger and I hear anguish, because that’s where my head is.

Summertime was never supposed to involve a few thousand dead, was it?

I didn’t give it enough play before. Listen to this. Love it or hate it, try to get it. Listen to this.

Billmon:

… The image — of a man frantically trying to breath through a pipe stuck in a ventilator grate as the waters rise over his head — is too searing to hold at an emotional distance. How long did he survive, submerged in total darkness? And how many others died in the same bizarre trap — too weak or terrified to break through the layers of plywood and asphalt that had suddenly become the lids on their underwater coffins?

Thinking about those deaths is like looking at pictures of people jumping, hand in hand, from the windows of the World Trade Center on 9/11 — forced in a moment of howling panic to choose between the flames and the long fall to the pavement below. Such images are unendurable. The mind recoils from them as if we ourselves were caught in the same trap.

And suddenly all the backbiting over who failed first — or most often, or most spectacularly — seems too vile to worry about, much less write about. Even the big, important questions — the future of New Orleans, the threat of global warming, the paralyzing problems of race and poverty in America — have lost their intellectual appeal. Too many people have died, and too much has been destroyed to try to make sense of it now. And as stupid and obnoxious and insane as the powers that be have been this past week, they don’t seem very funny now — not even Dick Cheney.

Sorry to be out of touch. Total shit day. Hope all is well with you. While I’m away, go listen to the tune Matt is offering up for your enjoyment and play it from the rooftops. Hell, I don’t even like pop music and this one caught me just right and just wrong. Shout if from every rooftop baby. (Direct link to the tune is here)

I’m a little off my nut tonight, so nothing from me. I do want you to go read this post and think long and hard about the message. (unpleasant image warning - get used to it because there is a lot more to come)

Washington Post:

Bush, meanwhile, declared Sept. 16 a national day of prayer for the victims of Hurricane Katrina…

What we need are leaders, not pandering wankers telling us when and for what to pray. Group hugs, national days of prayer and a token will get you a bus trip to the shit part of town and that’s just where we are. I’m not sure what about this lit the fuse in my head, but I’ve just about flipped.

“Cryin’ won’t help you, prayin’ won’t do you no good,
Now, cryin’ won’t help you, prayin’ won’t do you no good,
When the levee breaks, mama, you got to move.”

“Get Fucked Mr. Cheney…Go Fuck yourself Mr. Cheney.”

~An Unknown resident of Gulfport, Mississippi as picked up by CNN’s microphones during a Cheney press conference.