Ancient Greek Animals

Kiki wanted to see my pictures of dogs in Athens, so here are some animals!

Woof, meow, baa!

This dog was collecting tickets outside of the Agora.

These cats were in the Acropolis.

This baby goat was foraging in the hills outside of Nemea.

The famous, "kitties of Delphi", who were very interested in this man's halibut.

An Olympian lizard.

Chickens outside the hotel window. There was also a turkey, but I didn't take his picture.

Kitty and gyros- 4 euro.

A cat on Santorini on stairs

Tortoise. I also saw two makin' little tortoises, but for their privacy I did not take a picture.

This is my aunt's dog, and so not really Greek (actually, Chinese by birth) but she is certifiably cute! And, her name is Zoe, which is Greek.

Greece

In one of those strange occurrences that hurl humans back and forth across the globe, I woke up one morning to find myself in Greece. It is a wonderful place. Mountains coming out of the sea, feta cheese, and lots of history. I took a lot of pictures, here are some of the best. I made them smallish so the site wouldn't take a long time to load (though it probably will anyway), but should be able to click on them to get a bigger view.

I'll insert my witty comments in between, to maybe give you some context. Here they are, in no particular order.

This is Nafplio (corrected spelling, thanks kiki and Betabug!). It was the original capital of Greece, and is now a quiet little town with many forts and dogs.



I think the trees in Greece are beautiful. Such greens, even though they are most conifers growing in rocky soil.


This is Santorini. You've probably seen this picture or one similar on a calendar somewhere. They sell lots of calendars on Santorini. I didn't buy one, because I took my own picture. Though now I don't know what day of the week it is.



There was much debate about what kind of tree this is. Maybe cyprus, maybe cedar? Either way, I can tell you these trees are at dusk. (Definitively, Cyprus trees).


This tree's most significant aspect is its size. It is very big.


This is the sun setting over Ia, on Santorini. The island is a volcano. The sun is the same one that you know.


This is Mycenae. Agamemnon lived there. He killed his daughter and was killed by his wife and her lover who were killed by his other daughter. All because sometimes the ancients liked to feed either other human as a joke.


This is the Omphalos; the belly-button of the world. It lives at Delphi. I wonder where the after-birth of the world is now?


This is the biggest olive grove in Greece (the trees in the bottom of the valley). I am looking at it from the modern city of Delphi. It is very pretty.


This is the temple of Poseidon, on the southern-most point of Attica. People live near there, like, just whatever, I live in Poseidonia. I, on the other hand, live near the drycleaners.


The greeks love graffitti! This graffitto loves autonomy. ("Freedom to G. Dimitrakis", an anarchist bank robber. Thanks Betabug!)


More graffitti. It's pretty impressive, though I don't really know what it is.


This is on the outside of the Monastiraki subway station.


I guess kissing on steps is pretty romantic.


For some reason this one made me think of Steve Erickson


It's a fish farm, you fishbag!


"Fjord" in Greek.


The theater of Epidauros, and my Saucony.


I really, really wanted to see a goatherd while in Greece. It's a good thing lots of roads aren't marked, otherwise we never would have gotten lost in the hills of the Peloponnese and I never would have seen these goats.


Balloons!


The theater of Dionysos in Athens. I'm imagining how nervous Sophocles must have been on the opening performance of Oedipus Rex.


When driving in Greece, you can pretty much go either way you like.


Pretty rock.


Part of the Epidauros site.


Fira, on Santorini. The island in the middle is the cone of the volcano.


Bye bye sun.


No diving.


Part of the boxing and wrestling practice space at Olympia.


The Corinth canal. Take that, isthmus!


A pretty little garden in Delphi.


The acropolis. They are rebuilding it, because I guess some of it has fallen down over the years.


The arch entering the stadium at Olympia. Can you tell I really like the blue/green filter on my camera?


The temple of Athena at Delphi. You would recognize it, but I took the picture from an "unconventional angle". Artistic!


Bell tower in Fira. Delicious sunshine.


Bridge connecting Attica and the Peloponnese. I forget the name of the town.


There are like 500 more (literally) but these are the best. I also pasted together a panorama of the Epidauros theater, that is at top. I'll leave it there for awhile.

Yamas!

The Noble Democrat

In the last post I read regarding racism/bigotry, I wrote about the difference between racists and bigots; the former run the systematically racist institutions of the country, under the perhaps believed pretense that the institutions are fair, because they have the support of the majority population. The majority opinion, however, is often largely composed of bigots, who actually have a believe that some class of people is better/worse than another (although maybe only unconsciously), and so allow--either positively or through lack of action--the racists to continue operating racist institutions under the auspices of "fairness".

I think that this conception of the problem is hard for many "critically-minded observers" to grasp, because we look at the problem of racism/bigotry as a singular issue, one of "hate vs. love", or "democracy vs. intolerance", whereas the difference between a person having some hatred within them is very different than the substantive and systematic problems that allow for material persecution to arise. In other words, in most (but not nearly all) places in America, a person can walk down the street in relative freedom without being harassed and threaten with bodily harm, but this does not mean that there are not systematic reasons why more "minority members" of society are in poverty, or incarcerated, or in other words put at a material disadvantage to the material benefit of others.

So, in yet "other words" again, many avowedly liberal elements take an altogether simplified critical view of a problem that they claim to be facing, and therefore do not help solve the problem, and instead, perhaps are complacent. "Democratic" ideals will not provide the "A.N.S.W.E.R." to racism, because it is through "democracy" that racist systems such as our immigration policy is "elected" by our nation of bigots. As I try to remind people often, and they just as often like to forget or shrug off as an fluke of history, many regimes of outright hatred, oppression, and bigotry (can I scream 1933 any louder?) have been democratically elected.

Anyway, this is all a recap, and a further emphasis. The real reason for this post was that I happened to come across a neat little articulation of this sort of dynamic between the "higher" culture element of racism and the "lower" element of bigotry. Often they work in concert, such as in an out-and-out fascist regime, where the leaders exploit the hatreds of the people in order to catapult their policies. I would theme anti-immigration politicians in this country under this category.

However, another sort is perhaps just as malignant while appearing to be helping to fight bigotry. This is the liberal attitude of which I gestured towards; in which bigotry perhaps is critically engaged, but with the favor being towards an ideal "liberal" society in which the values of democracy are identified as being counter to bigotry, when in fact, they allow it to roam free, and perhaps to gain power. The systematic racism may roam free, divorced by liberal democratic theory from the bigotry that is so obviously abhorrent.

Enter, if you please, Herman Melville. The man may have had certain prejudices; I cannot say, as I never had contact with a mid-19th century man, nor Melville himself. But I have had contact with some of his writing, such as Chapter 26, from his novel The Confidence-Man. The title of the chapter in this de-light-ful book is as follows:

Containing the metaphysics of Indian-hating, according to the view of one evidently not so prepossessed as Rousseau in favor of savages.

The chapter is an account of a backwoodsman who hates Indians; apparently not an uncommon character in Melville's day. The narrating character tells us about these persons:

"The backwoodsman is a lonely man. He is a thoughtful man. He is man strong and unsophisticated. Impulsive, he is what some might call unprincipled. At any rate, he is self-willed; being one who less hearkens to what others may say about things, than looks for himself, to see what are things themselves. If in straits, there are few to help; he must depend upon himself; he must continually look to himself. Hence self-reliance, to the degree of standing by his own judgment, though it stand alone."

This is not too far afield from most bigots; having little education or "social" rearing, they rely upon their own feelings in their politics as they have had to in their lives, and thus are given to the maxims of popular opinion rather than the ideals of learned society. A reliance upon one's own abilities may lead to a false sense of superiority. And even what he learns is often skewed:

"For however charitable it may be to view Indians as members of the Society of Friends, yet to affirm them such to one ignorant of Indians, whose lonely path lies a long way through their lands, this, in the event, might prove not only injudicious but cruel. At least something of this kind would seem the maxim upon which backwoods' education is based. ... 'As the twig is bent the tree's inclined.'"

A strong-willed, not-quite-supremely educated person is often a bigot. This seems plausible. But the most interesting part of Melville's chapter, to me, is the title. Although it isn't mentioned in the chapter itself, this backwoodsman is contrasted in subtle fashion to "one prepossessed as Rousseau in favor of savages".

Of the bigot/backwoodsman: "Suns and seasons fleet; the tiger-lily blows and falls; babes are born and leap in their mothers' arms; but, the Indian-ahter is good as gone to his long home, and "Terror" is his epitaph." However, the person who is enamored with the idea of the "noble savage", on the contrary, is a fickle creature--the vicissitudes of whose so-called steady, critically-reasoning gaze are subject to shift with the currents of popular theory. Is the concept of the "noble savage", a theory that intends to posit a pre-Fall (or perhaps pre-felix culpa) innocence of man, really the logical and theoretical opposite to bigotry? Is loving through false equality the fix to hating via false superiority?

Now, we can look back upon Rousseau's theory as a merry occasion in our history of colonialism, when those silly Europeans thought that the funny-colored people they were killing might have been a transference of their own misplaced innocence. Thank goodness for the Christ! If it wasn't for redeemers, we might have to actually deal with our issues in this life.

But is the humanism of today really any different? Or have we simply shifted our colonialism to within "us", letting the vegetables on the bottom of the melting pot burn and stick to the bottom, as long as the top is heated comfortably? Those of democratic theory try to convince us that only if everyone is equal, then hate will magically disappear as a relic of the dirty world before the "son of man" that is equality saved us all. As long as equality is resurrected in the Millennial future, we can say that it has merely died for our sins, and not for our taste for blood. By attempting to find the "soul" of humanity as an equal and innocent equivalent within us, those of the "noble human" philosophy neglect to deal with the hatred that is our actual existence. The fact is, this is not just an optimism; it is an avoidance of the reasons that people hate. How will nostalgia for the "noble savage" stop the Indian-hater from stalking his prey?

It really isn't so complicated. One only has to see what the problem is: the Indian-hater still exists. As long as he exists, he will conduct his war:

"Ever on the noiseless trail; cool, collected, patient; less seen than felt; snuffling, smelling--a Leather-stocking Nemesis."

Until, that is, we actually have a chance to inscribe that epitaph for him. And frankly, that isn't the responsibility of any noble savage.

Spirit of the Age

I've written a bit about 9/11 conspiracy theories, but not for a long time. What I wrote before is on my log of old "Grinnell Plan" posts, here and here. Most of it has to do with the excellent site, Cooperative Research, and some talk about what actually makes a "conspiracy".

But, such an important topic we can hardly allow to lie dormant.

(let's just be clear, the topic is not whether or not the American government is complacent in the deaths that occurred on 9/11/2001, but to what extent they are responsible. The former is as close to fact as exists in this world.)

I've been watching a pretty excellently produced film today, entitled Zeitgeist.

It's range is pretty broad; it begins by discussing some theories about the origin of the myth of the messiah known as Jesus. Some of these are more interesting than others; some, like the basis of many religions on astrology and astronomy, are pretty interesting and cool. Others, like the assigning of blame for the rise of the belief in Jesus on an effort to manipulate the world, are a bit more directed towards the goal of the film.

(Sure, the messiah myth is not necessarily completely based on fact, but the messiah concept is nothing new, and Jesus just happened to be the one that stuck. I just think the rise of Christianity is a bit more nuanced than that.)

But, the point of beginning with this, is to show that there is a lot of history that is ignored (such as the similarities between the Jesus messiah and many other similar figures in cultures around the world) in the effort to maintain a consistent myth that just so happens to keep the big guys in charge.

Then, we start learning about more recent history, that those other than Religious Studies folk may be interesting. And so begins a great recounting of most of the facts that draw heavy suspicion to the "myth of 9/11", and in addition, recounts the history of the American economic and political system in manipulating public opinion in order to get what it wants.

Besides being the best produced video on the subject I have ever seen, it is also one of the best in content, depicted facts, and not falling into rhetoric about new world orders and brave new worlds. On the website, (contained in the link above), there is the promise of an interactive transcript, which will be posted "soon" that will contain links from the facts mentioned in the film to source materials and further readings, which I am very excited to see, because that level of detail and accuracy to sources in often by-passed in videos of this kind.

The video has been viewed on Google video over 3 million times since June, which I think is a testament to its watchability and its accessibility to those who are not typical conspiracy researchers. Actually, it reminded me a lot of the Koyaanisqatsi trilogy, in particular the last film of the three, for it's artful blending of music and images (especially the beginning overture). If only you added to the trilogy a good collection of narrative quotations and factual evidence, you would have this film.

Anyway, the film is two hours long, and I highly recommend it. Regardless of what you "believe" about the story of the world and our lives as told to us, you should do what the creators of the film suggest; look at the contradicting evidence that shows that the official story is anything but true, and then go out, and find out the truth for yourself.

Doctor, Lawyer, Biblical Scholar

By now my opening reference to the decrease in post frequency from what was more than one per day in April, to my first September post coming on the last day of the month, has become cliche.

Fact is, I am moving my writing projects off the internet in the hopes that they become more substantial. Perhaps the blog will come back in force; certainly there is going to be no hiatus or retirement. But regardless, I'm going to stop referencing my lack of posting in my posting, so you are just going to have to take what you get, bud.

There might be more pictures, too, because that takes a lot less thought. For example, I went to Greece, and I can show you some pictures of pretty mountains, blue oceans, and lots of broken stuff.

But, stemming from my current off-line writing project, I would like to share some thoughts about my undergraduate major of study.

I was a Religious Studies major. Now, I give a lot of different answers to the ubiquitous statement/question: "Adam, you are a dreadlocked, SF-reading, Marxist/Anarchist-theory-espousing, rock-music-listening, agnostic-at-best, anti-moralist loudmouth. Why would you want to be a Religious Studies major?"

The easiest answer, that avoids further delving into my personal goals, secrets, and underlying psyche, is "To teach the study of religion." This is a near-tautology, but from most people the question is idle at best, so this tends to satisfy them, or at least offer a change in topic.

Other answers include:

[to an avowed liberal]: "To understand what makes those crazy religious folk so crazy."

[to a crazy religious person]: "To understand our civilization's heritage."

[to a fellow religious studies major]: "There was no foreign language requirement."

[to my advisor]: "Because your classes are awesome."

[to myself, late at night, while I lie awake worrying about how I will pay the bills]: " ... "

[to god, come the judgment day]: "I've read ALL your books!"


Those are just answers of convenience. The real reason, is one that nobody gets to hear, because they wouldn't understand.

AND NOW, THE REAL REASON THAT ADAM WAS A RELIGIOUS STUDIES MAJOR:

I was a religious studies major because, now as I sit here, reading R. H. Charles commentary on the motivations of the various authors, interpolators, and editors of the Book of Enoch, I can daydream this scene:

In the Qum'ran community, the editor of the Book of Enoch comes to work, ceremoniously washes his hands, and sits down at his stone slab of a desk, chiseled with the Aramaic script for "Editor", an hour after all his employees have come to work. He finds a scroll memo at his desk, from Mellehnakik, his editorial assistant. He sighs, and reads it. It seems the scribes need the proofs for the final version of the Similitudes, because they were due last thursday. The editor picks up his brush, and fires a quick scroll mail back. It says, "Forget the narrative inconsistencies, it doesn't matter. Make sure the Messianic references stay in, and if there are any holes, just fill it in from the Apocalypse of Noah. We own the reprint rights. Signed, Editor." Then he looks over his desk to see what is next, spots a manuscript from some guy named Jesus, and reaches for his stack of rejection form-letters.

Yup. To me, that is hilarious, and worth the 30-odd credits and one senior thesis. I told you that you wouldn't understand.

When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the post

For some reason this weekend I've thought of a whole slew of topics about which to write. I have three different drafts saved with ideas for future posts, involving science, secrets, SF, and also stupid artists.

But the one I'm going to write about today involves music, and musicians. Specifically, musicians playing other musicians music. Otherwise known as a cover song, it poses an interesting concept for the music fan.

I bought a bunch of cassette tapes, and today I'm dubbing some LPs and mp3s to tape, so that I may listen to them in my car, in which the CD player is broken, and only has a working deck. I'm using 90 minute tapes, which is perfect for one LP per side. The mp3s are much more flexible, but I'm taking the opportunity to dub collections of 7" singles, and various disparate recordings, so that I can have some ready made playlists available for my commute.

While it is perhaps to cliche to discuss the art of the mix tape after such romanticized popular culture depictions like High Fidelity, it certainly exists. You only have to listen to a poorly made tape or mix to figure it out. Although the skill necessary to punch clunky cassette deck buttons in the proper sequence is now retro-chic thanks to the ease of the CD-burn, (I remember when MiniDiscs were considered awesomely new), there are also levels to think about, the importance of track timing so that one does not record over leader strip at the beginning and end of a side, the difference between side A and side B (aesthetically), and of course, the always important placement of thematic tracks to segue the mood.

But maybe this is just an attempt for the music fan to consider him/herself half as artistic in the playing of the song as the artist that originally recorded it. A bit of idolization and repetition, perhaps. As my father and grandfather have said, the only thing they can play is the radio.

But what makes a musician attempt to play another musicians song? Of course, it is nothing new for an artist to record a song not written by him/herself; the singer/songwriter is a pretty new phenomenon in the history of recorded music. But to record a new version of a song that was already popularized by another artist... why? Maybe to gain some fame from the recording of a recognizable track. Surely hiphop and DJ remix genres have benefited from this aspect as much as anyone else, almost to the extent that it resembles the fan's mix tape. Oh, Will Smith likes Stevie Wonder? How artistic!

Not so long ago I wrote about Softcell's cover of Gloria Jones' original recording of "Tainted Love". While their version of the song has again been covered by many groups, I speculated that their cover had some historical significance because of the timeliness of their release during the outbreak of AIDS, as did the original release during a pivotal year in the fight for racial civil rights. This makes the cover very interesting, and evocative.

I think there are two main justifications for covering a song, and thereby deeming it a "good cover".

1- To try to play the song as well or better than the original recording, as an homage to the original.

An example of this is of all-cover bands. These are bands that like the original band enough to celebrate their music by forming a group solely devoted to playing that group's oeuvre. Whether or not they succeed or their attempts are even enjoyable, are up to the listener.

2- To try and artistically interpret the song, making one's own take on the song and thereby deepening the artistic value of the piece, or updating it for a new era/style.

Softcell's "Tainted Love" would fall into this category. Hiphop also scores big here, with samples from the soul era, or even covers of early rap like the numerous re-makes and re-hashings of Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick's "La Di Da Di".

While I was making some tapes, I thought about a particular manner of this song remaking, when the lyrics are changed ever so slightly. I think I noted in the post on Softcell how Gloria Jones' line, "I've given you all a girl can give," is changed by Marc Almond to "I've given you all a boy can give." Now, of course it would make more sense for Almond to say "boy" than "girl" because of his anatomy. But, as history would have it, it also gives a large amount of significance to the re-recording because of his sexuality, the sexuality depicted throughout the entire album, and the cultural links between all of these back in 1981.

When dubbing a copy of Siouxsie and the Banshee's 1978 album, The Scream, I was struck by their cover of "Helter Skelter". Of course, the sound is already quite different than the Beatles' original version, although it contains a lot of the same manic energy as the original, perhaps the sort of manic energy that would drive borderline psychotics like Charles Manson to predict the coming race-war apocalypse. (Conspiracy note: The Beatles come to America in 1964, the same year as Gloria Jones' "Tainted Love" was released.)

But anyway, the lyrics are all the same, except for the second time through the chorus, Siouxsie Sioux, rather than "You may be a lover but you ain't no dancer," sings "You may be a lover but you ain't no fucking dancer."

Now, what is the significance of this change in the song? Is it just part of the aesthetic of the punk movement, a big middle finger up in the air to the sort of people who liked the Beatles? But then why cover the song at all? Or is it that in 1978, ten years after the release of the White Album, things had not gotten better than 1968, but had gotten worse, so that this was not a whimsical reminisce of the "60s" but a rebirth of that manic energy that was somewhat, although perhaps in an un-dead sense, alive in those days?

Or maybe it's nothing but a coincidence. After all, Cake's cover of Gloria Gaynor's disco hit "I Will Survive" changes the lyric, "I would have changed that stupid lock," to "I would have changed my fucking lock." And I have no reason to find anything significant about that.

That's the thing about history and culture. Any significance is merely what you happen to find. And with that, I will go back to making significant progress in my mix tapes.

The Kind of Day

Today was totally the drink-a-beer-in-the-after-work-shower kind of day. After talking off my mud stained clothes and boots, I went to the fridge and withdrew the beer that I had been envisioning since about 11:30 this morning. It looked like this:

I twisted the cap off and flicked it into the recycle bin, and then turned and walked into the bathroom to turn on the water and draw the shower curtain. Then I took my first sip; it was a long draw, draining the neck of the bottle, and I felt my muscles begin to relax.

A lot of people place a lot of importance upon beer quality. I've tried a lot of these so-called quality beers, and they are good. But I really like the taste of certain, more economical brews. Miller High Life is one of them. Union made, and economically priced--served cold, it is a beverage a hard worker can feel good about imbibing.

This first-sip-description may sound like it came from a beer commercial, but frankly, it was that good. Idealized good. If the folks at Miller had approached me at that moment, standing naked in front of my warming shower, and asked me to write and star in a commercial for them, I would have done it. I would have done it because people deserve to know how much I was enjoying this beer at this time.

I got in the shower, and let the water run over me, through my hair, and down my back, washing off the dirt from the trench I dug today. I picked up the beer, which I had set on the small table next to the tub, and took another swing, enjoying the cold malty flavor as it washed into my stomach.

This sip was even more idyllic. The humidity from the shower caused cold lines of condensation to fog off the bottom of the bottle, wafting down through the steams of water. The foam bounced up the bottle as I tilted it back upright and away from my lips, and I could just hear the faint fizz of carbonation above the sound of the shower nozzle.

As I renewed my body through the miracle of indoor plumbing, I finished the entire beer. I'm not sure if I let the shower last as long as the beer, or whether I savored the beer until the shower was complete. After the last dregs had dripped into me, I let the water from the shower rinse the bottle so that it could be eventually recycled. I would have left the empty bottle on the table next to the tub as a milestone or shrine of my experience, but I knew my lover and housemate would not have appreciated that, so I took it back to the kitchen where it belonged.

I was relaxed, and ready for an evening.

Re-heating a Cold War

This little article details how the Russian military is souping itself back up, heating its leftovers and stirring up trouble. It continues the speculation in my little post on Iran and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, about how Asia is not laying low, as the War on Terror may have us believe.

Not that I think the Cold War is going to reheat, but I think that when Americans talk and think about Asia they only think about the Middle East, and maybe Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran. The fact is Asia is huge, there are a lot of people there, and most of them are not content to let America run the world. Considering how the Project for a New American Century (the hardcore neocon crowd, look it up, it's an interesting conspiracy in itself) have dropped the ball with their "New Pearl Harbor" that was supposed to steel American ideology towards global dominance, I would say an increasing conflict with Asia will not be our finest hour either.

Basically it looks like trouble, from which no country will probably end up really doing much better. Instability is bad for most parties and peoples--not that stability is always better. But, while it happens we might as well take our historical lessons where we can, so that they tragedy of history is not a total loss. Most people probably won't take it to heart though.

But if you might, fair reader, listen: "Terrorism" is a flash in the pan. Not a harmless flash in the pan, because it can certainly cause damage, and not a simple flash either, because it is a tactic near impossible to defeat. But, what lasting conflict encompasses is always economics. Ideology is transitory: fleeting and fickle. Powerful, sure, but large groups of people with always come back to the oikos. Economy, that is. Guns, butter, rice, toasters. Will a billion Chinese people simply go without their cars? Will a nation spanning 14 time zones simply ignore their military as a economic stimulus? Will the countries holding petroleum reserves refuse to control the buying and selling of it? No, no, no. Terrorists will terrorize, but without the big armies, there will be no one for them to rebel against.

Watch, and learn. States, armies, banners will rise and fall again and again, and the stock market will love it (and hate it).

Kissies!

Hooray for Us!

Wow, you sure can't keep up a blog working the construction the way you can while working an office job!

Just a quick stop in to keep whoever is reading this blog reading it.... and therein...


CELEBRATING THE THOUSANDTH HIT TO WELCOME TO THE INTERDOME!!!!

Thanks to our analytics website, sitemeter.com, I can tell you these facts about the first quadruple digit
digital visit
to our site:

Hit number 1,000 is from Gladwyne, Pennsylvania, where s/he surfs the Interdome on a Mac via the friendly folks at Verizon Internet Services!

S/he visited the site on August 14th, at 12:22pm EDT, and viewed five different pages, for a total time on the site of at least one minute!

S/he came across us after search Google for "share 'in a roman mood' 'human sexual response' ", and was led to our post, "Human Pentameter Response," in which we oh so pointedly analyzed the meter of a song by the little known but excellent post-punk band, Human Sexual Response.

Unfortunately, I didn't actually share the album I was discussing, so our 1,000th customer probably left our site to sunnier parts of the Interdome, in a more than a little disappointed state of mind, just like many others of you probably have!

So thanks for stopping by, face/nameless Pennsylvanian! Hopefully you will randomly hit upon us via a massive and relatively arbitrary search engine again!

And many more!

A History of Violence

Just a short post today, linking to a much longer essay.

I got this link from Broshaq, who posted it on his blog, "Liquid Crack Repository." I'm just going to echo the link with a few comments of my own.

The link is to an article on Truthdig that is a quite long summation of a study conducted jointly with The Nation, entitled “The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness,” about the horrible atrocities perpetrated by American troops upon Iraqi civilians.

It's quite horrible, as one might expect. The gist of it is, there are many horrible killings, tortures, and violences that go uninvestigated or unreported, and are pretty much status quo for American troops in Iraq.

It is easy to say things regarding this report. "The war is awful, lost, and needs to be stopped now." "War is hell." "We are alienating the civilians rather than helping them, and training terrorists." "Colonialism, Colonialism, Colonialism." All of which are important things to say.

But what I want to say, because it was the particular conclusion that struck me first after the initial horror wore off is about how history will look at this. America looks like an oppressive, occupying power, and no amount of apologizing about how were were fighting for freedom or against terrorism or for democracy can balance this out. This shit looks like fucking Kristalnacht, and it is impossible to see it any other way.

After recounting one of the more benign stories about property invasion and unwarranted arrest, one of the soldiers said, “I just remember thinking to myself, I just brought terror to someone else under the American flag, and that’s just not what I joined the Army to do.” This is what we are going to see from this whenever we look back on this war. Americans flew halfway around the globe to terrorize people, purportedly for their ideals. We are the fascists now, pure and simple, no metaphor, no compare and contrast. Our soldiers, under some misconceived notion of promoting security, break into houses at night, destroy property, shoot innocent people for effect, scare children, and carry their parents away to be lost in prison. How is this a tactic of fighting terrorism? It is terrorism.

I only hope that the people who argued that this war was a good thing (which includes a large amount of people who are now so against it) have a hell to go to worse than the one that they caused. But I know they don't.