Steaming Pile
There is a steaming pile of filth in my backyard and I could not be happier.
That’s because the steaming pile isn’t a giant turd: it’s a heap of compost, and the steam indicates the lawn and leaf waste, along with vegetable scraps and coffee grounds I throw in every week, is beginning to cook down. In a few weeks it will be a rich, black, nutrient-filled soil amendment ready to be cultivated into my garden beds, and i couldn’t be happier (except, perhaps, with an even bigger steaming pile of filth).
Hello Music Lovers
Live rockabilly with the Super Devils, all night long. Murph’s is a REALLY small room, with a good beer selection. Come on out, we’ll see you next weekend!
We’ll have another video soon enough, but here’s a reminder of the sound we’re throwin’ down:
And Now for Something Completely Different
UPDATE: This one’s pretty fun too:
Goodbye Rocky Point
Theme played by Rhode Island’s legendary ,a href=”http://neutralnationmovie.blogspot.com/”>Neutral Nation.
Speaking of Neutral Nation…
Ch-ch-changes
It was a big weekend, and I got a lot of work done around the house, played a bunch of music, and drank a bunch of beer.
There’s a lot of stuff going on right now, enough so that I’m posting Bowie videos, and I’m not in the talkative mood today.
I Am No Longer Breaking the Law (In Virginia)
FAIRFAX, Va. – A man charged with indecent exposure after two women said they saw him naked inside his own home was acquitted Wednesday by a Virginia jury.
Erick Williamson, 29, has argued since his October arrest that he should not be punished for being naked in the privacy of his own home…
In December, a judge in Fairfax County’s General District Court convicted Williamson of misdemeanor indecent exposure, but imposed neither jail time nor a fine. Still, Williamson appealed his case to the county’s circuit court, risking a maximum punishment of a year in jail to clear his name.
“When you know you’ve done nothing wrong, it’s hard to take these kind of accusations and not stand up to it,” said Williamson, an out-of-work commercial diver who racked up thousands of dollars in legal fees.
Va. Jury: Naked inown home not indecent
Well, THAT’S certainly a relief (although if you’ve been to MY home you know how indecent it gets….)
malcolm mclaren, RIP
Malcolm McLaren may have been a rock-n-roll swindler (among other things), and I owe him my sanity. Let me explain.
In 1983, I was a lonely angry not-quite-yet-a-teenager. i was small for my age, and a late bloomer (puberty didn’t really kick in until summer 1984). i hated my parents, my school, and everything else. I liked rock-n-roll and metal, but none of it really spoke to me: how deeply involved can a kid get in a Dio song, when none of the lyrics make any sense*?
When i began gravitating toward punk rock and hardcore, the Dead Kennedys was the first band that lit the fuse, but it was the Sex Pistols, the band that Mclaren managed, that blew my fucking mind.
i immediately began learning their songs, beginning with “problems”:
Continuing into “Bodies”:
her name was pauline, she lived in a tree…
and then “Submission”:
Thanks so much Malcom. I know you ripped the band off and I don’t know if you and Johnny ever spoke to each other again, but you helped the Sex Pistols become a world-famous punk rock band, and for that this grown-up is eternally grateful.
*i totally love Dio, and this version of Holy Diver by KillSwitch Engage is almost as good as the original, and it even has Dio in the video: I dare you not to rock out.
Lucksmiths: Fiction
random video for the day, from Mark, Marty, and Tally.
i toured with these guys back in 2001. Good times…
An Answer for Matt Miller
matt Miller wants to know how we can rescue capitalism from Wall Street:
At what point does the ubiquity of the undeserving rich become so corrosive in a democracy that it sparks a backlash that wrongly discredits capitalism altogether?
That’s my question for Bob Rubin and Charles Prince, both formerly of Citigroup, when they testify before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission on Thursday. Though first I’d put it this way: How’d you guys make so much money running Citigroup into the ground and leaving it a ward of the state?
Miller then provides a number of examples, beginning with FChuck Prince and Boob Rubin:
Prince earned at least $120 million for running Citi for four years, during which time $64 billion in market value vanished. Rubin made at least $115 million (plus stock options) between 1999 and 2008, before the feds [ie, taxpayers, -ed] had to inject $45 billion and then guarantee $300 billion of the firm’s liabilities to keep the place afloat.
Miller identifies a lot of problems, including the normalization of reckless gambling as a matter of fiscal policy among the nation’s biggest banks and investment firms, and the way the executives who crashed those banks walked away with billions in personal profit. Miller claims this kind of abuse will discourage people’s faith in capitalism, and wonders what can be done.
Ahem:
BEIJING, July 10 — China executed its former top food and drug regulator on Tuesday for taking bribes to approve untested medicine, as the Beijing leadership scrambled to show that it was serious about improving the safety of Chinese products.
The Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court carried out the death sentence against Zheng Xiaoyu, 62, the former head of the State Food and Drug Administration, shortly after the country’s Supreme Court rejected his final appeal.
Mr. Zheng, who had appealed his May 29 sentence on the grounds that it was too severe and that he had confessed to the bribery charges against him, became the first ministerial-level official put to death since 2000 and the fourth since China opened its doors to the outside world nearly 30 years ago.
But several people died from the tainted products. And China is not alone in treating corruption as a capital offense.
For instance, Vietnam occasionally imposes the death penalty. In 2006, the government executed Phung Long That, a former anti-smuggling investigator in Ho Chi Minh City, for accepting bribes and helping to smuggle roughly $70 million worth of goods.
In fact, throughout history, bribery has often been thought of as a crime that could harm the state – thus worthy of extreme punishment.
18 Chinese Managers Executed for Shoddy Quality
BEIJING – Eighteen factory managers were executed for poor product quality at Chien Bien Refrigerator Factory on the outskirts of the Chinese capital.The managers – twelve men and six women – were taken to a rice paddy outside the factory and unceremoniously shot to death as 500 plant workers looked on. Ministry of Economic Reform spokesman, Xi Ten Haun, said the action was required for committing unpardonable crimes against the people of China.
We live in a country that treats children accused of crimes as adults. We ruin people’s lives over marijuana. Some of our more stupid states execute retarded people.
So if that’s the case, I can see no real problem with executing CEOs of banks that collapse the economy. In fact, seeing these monsters swinging from a gallows prominently placed in front of the NYSE might even help restore faith in capitalism, which is currently stained as a system that rewards criminal behavior.
Or as Ice Cube once sang, “don’t fight the power, just shoot the motherfucker.”
The Emperor Gets a Job
Via Jim Stearns. Funny as hell.
