Sweatshirt Weather

Missed Connection

You, a stunning brunette in a yellow sundress standing at the corner of Spring & Broadway.

Me, a singing anthropomorphized schoolbus named Jerry being pursued by the mafia.

TitusAndronicusLLC: TITUS ANDRONICUS LLC MIXTAPE VOL 1

titusandronicusllc:

DOWNLOAD

1. Intro

2. The Boys Are Back In Town (Thin Lizzy)

live at the Stone Pony, Asbury Park, NJ 3/4/2012, recorded by Tommy R the soundman

3. Upon Viewing Oregon’s Landscape with the Flood of Detritus

from the forthcoming split seven inch single with Diarrhea Planet, recorded…

Postscript: I’m writing a series of novels about a gentleman detective named “Gamely Fielding” just so you’re all aware.

I knew Superman. Superman was a friend of mine. Governor, you’re no Superman.

Hi. I care a lot about Superman and also not killing people, so here is a thing that is informed by that.

The New York Times, 9/3/11:

MANCHESTER, N.H. — You can just call him Superman.

At least, that’s what Governor Rick Perry of Texas told a nine-year-old boy at a Manchester house party Saturday, when the boy, Ari, asked him which superhero he would be, if he could posses superhuman powers.

“I’m going to show you my age a little bit, Ari, because I don’t know any of the real current superheroes,” Mr. Perry said, gamely fielding the question. “But there was one back in my day named Superman, and Superman came to save the United States.”

SOME BALLS, RICK PERRY!

Now, other people have written more eloquently about why Rick Perry is a maniac than I will here, but I feel compelled to WEIGH IN (watch out) because of the following fun fact. Get ready, because this fact is very fun.

Fun fact! In Superman’s DEBUT appearance, 1938’s Action Comics #1, his very FIRST act of heroism is saving an innocent woman from death row. IT IS THE FIRST THING HE DOES IN HIS FIRST ADVENTURE.

Compare that to Rick Perry, who last night garnered APPLAUSE for executing 234 people while he was governor of Texas, at least one of whom (science and good journalism both tell us) was more than likely innocent. There are questions about whether Perry actively hampered an investigation that would’ve proven Cameron Willingham innocent, but even if we give Perry the benefit of the doubt (sure, let’s do that), the whole business is still unbelievably revolting.

And just to say it, this is only one of quite a few ways in which Rick Perry is not Superman. I’m not going to go into every one of them here, but I could. Know that.

Though Superman also delivers the “real murderess” to the authorities in Action #1 (presumably for an off-panel electrocution), in later years his anti-killing stance would become much more explicit. 1988’s Superman #22 had him play executioner for three Phantom Zone criminals (real baddies!), an act that haunted Superman for years afterwards and informed his policy that no matter how horrid the crime, to kill is to kill is to kill.

The justice system is not infallible, and the death penalty has almost certainly killed innocent people multiple times over. But even if it were just a fraction of a doubt about ONE person, that should be all anyone needs to oppose it 100%.

(Sidebar: I genuinely don’t get why people who don’t trust government institutions enough to let them teach kids or build mass transit or collect taxes think that letting them kill folks is just aces. Maybe this question naive, but it is for reals a question that is in my brain that I do not know the answer to.)

Hey dumb Rick Perry: Just dumbly call yourself The Punisher (who is dumb) and get it over with, dumb-dumb.

Kibblesmith.com: Showbeast: Something Big (and you can help)

This guy knows what’s up.

kibblesmith:

If I asked you for $5 and couldn’t tell you what it was for, it would be for this:

I desperately want to see what my dear friends in the Showbeast crew will do with a real budget, and so should you. They are art, and video and comedy, and once or twice, they were a Beach House or Dan Deacon video.

Please take a second to watch their ultra-impressive pitch video, and donate as much as you feel. Let me know afterward, and we can have an Official Midwest Screening at my place. Or, if you just like what you see above, or enjoy weird art and comedy, I think Tumblr has introduced a reblogging feature that will help you send this invitation to others.

Showbeast. It’s a show. For kids.

The Times, like Harvard University, where I attended graduate school, is one of the country’s most elite and exclusive institutions. Its ethos can be best summed up with the phrase “You are lucky to be here.” That huge numbers of people at The Times, as at Harvard, buy into this institutional hubris makes the paper, where I spent 15 years—nearly all of them, thankfully, as a foreign correspondent a few thousand miles from the newsroom—a fear-ridden and oppressive place to work. The Times newsroom, like most corporate nerve centers, is a labyrinth of intrigue, gossip, back-biting, rumor, false piety, rampant ambition, betrayal and deception. Those who play this game well are repugnant. They are also usually the people who run the place. 

When you allow an institution to provide you with your identity and sense of self-worth you become an obsequious pawn, no matter how much talent you possess. You live in perpetual fear of what those in authority think of you and might do to you. This mechanism of internalized control—for you always need them more than they need you—is effective. The rules of advancement at the paper are never clearly defined or written down. Careerists pay lip service to the stated ideals of the institution, which are couched in lofty rhetoric about balance, impartiality and neutrality, but astutely grasp the actual guiding principle of the paper, which is: Do not significantly alienate the corporate and political power elite on whom the institution depends for access and money. Those who master this duplicitous game do well. Those who cling tenaciously to a desire to tell the truth, even at a cost to themselves and the institution, become a management problem. This creates tremendous friction within the paper. I knew reporters with a conscience who would arrive at the paper and vomit in the restroom from nervous tension before starting work. If Rossi had examined the effects of this institutional hubris and the pathology of the paper’s self-infatuation, if he had looked at the paper’s large and small failures as well as its successes, he would have pushed past the myth of the Great Oz, peddled to him by the paper’s editors and minions like Carr, and uncovered its troubled core.

Chris Hedges, reviewing “Page One” for Truthdig