CHANGE OF ADDRESS Look over here for the time being. This'll probably be the new location once I get things figured out.

ROBERTSON DAVIES THE LIBRETTIST A Ben Viccari article from 1999 informs me that damned clever and entertaining canuck Robertson Davies was also a one-time librettist. ... As the musical world knew by opening night, Davies had chosen for his subject a classic, ribald Roman work by Apuleius, one of history's first novels, written about A.D. 170. It was a subject he had contemplated for

LOST IN SPACE John Naughton has some interesting observations about the effect of cellphones and portable music players on social spaces. I was in my teens when the Sony Walkman first appeared, and when I got one (well, a clone thereof) I wore it outside a few times, but could never get past a strong feeling of sensual claustrophobia it gave me. Eventually I also obtained a portable CD

YOUR GENRE SUCKS David Thorpe applies the scientific method to the various popular music subgenres that annoy us all. ... American Indie Rock Well, first of all, I’d better head the “but indie’s not a genre!” nerds off at the pass: shut up, you. Don’t pretend not to know exactly what I’m talking about when I say “indie rock.” It means white kids with guitars playing slapdash lo-fi

THAD JONES/MEL LEWIS ON MOSAIC Since this sucker is long out of print from the marvelous Mosaic label (although it can be occasionally spotted on ebay for around $300), and since I'm feeling quite the scofflaw today, here's the first disc of the 5 volume Thad Jones/Mel Lewis "Complete Solid State Recordings" Mosaic set ripped at 256 kpbs. There are those who consider these recordings the

LIBERVENTIONISM Max is so good today I'm going to have to steal from him again. But to be fair, I'm only pilfering his stuff because I'm much lazier and less talented than he. Also, I've made a blood oath that all the rounds are on me should we ever frequent the same watering hole. By the way, the original is preferable seeing how the laziness thing prevents me from including his text

THE PRIVATIZATION FLIM-FLAM Max Sawicky addresses the privatization thing in his inimitable style. ... A basic assumption in the debate about Social Security is that everyone should be invested in equities, or private sector assets in general. We beg to differ. Most people -- meaning those whose ability to accumulate wealth is limited -- need title to low-risk assets. This means pension

BHOPAL AT 20 Matt Taibbi writes a piece about Bhopal that doesn't mostly deal with how Americans have gotten over the trauma of 7000 dead Indians and tens of thousands more scarred and in pain for the rest of their shortened lives. ... U.S. reporters repeatedly hammered three themes in the press. The first was that the Indian anger over the accident was an overemotional response by

THE 50 MOST LOATHSOME Via Cheek, we find the heartwarming vitriol that is the Beast 50 Most Loathsome People in America list. ... 45. John McCain Crimes: Survived years of torture in Vietnam only to become a bend over buddy for a sheltered rich dunce. McCain could have bolstered his largely unearned air of credibility this year had he stood against Bush, but instead chose to show us

ANOTHER SIDE OF FOOTBALL ESPN's starting a five-part series about Mike Webster, the Hall of Fame Pittsburgh Steelers center whose 17 year career in the NFL basically beat the life out of him, e.g. "Desperate for a few moments of peace from the acute pain, repeatedly stunning himself, sometimes a dozen times, into unconsciousness with a black Taser gun. "The only way he could get to

A GRIM FUTURE John Emerson sees a future of continued marginalization - with no real limits as to what the cabal can and will do to suppress their political opponents, i.e. "traitors" - as the cabal continues in its 50-year-plan to spread "freedom" and "liberty" throughout the galaxy. ... In a recent New Yorker piece, Seymour Hersh has reported that the Bush administration plans to

THE PRIVATIZATION GAMBIT The Decembrist explains the machinations within the GOP concerning the White House's social security privatization blitzkrieg. The responses are also worth a read. The best minds of my generation profess to being mystified by why House Ways and Means Chair Bill Thomas would declare Social Security privatization a "dead horse." It's twisted, but not impossible

A MIDDLE EAST PREDICTION Ran HaCohen (probably a self-loathing Jew rather than an anti-semite) first tells us what sorts of Palestinian leaders are acceptable and unacceptable. ... Israel can live with only two kinds of Palestinian leaders. It can live with a puppet who accepts Israel's sovereignty over the Palestinian territories (we may give him some "autonomy" in return), who is

OUR NATIONAL GUARDIAN Russ Baker writes about the story that unfortunately died. A Trojan horse bought by CBS does not exonerate the child of privilege's murky National Guard record, especially given how he's so willing to sacrifice those from the other side of the tracks. After Monday’s bloodletting at CBS, Karl Rove and company must have broken out the champagne. Within the past six

PBS AND ADM Edward Shanahan (via Undernews) writes about the continuing intimate connection between corporate crook and welfare queen ADM and the increasingly irrelevent PBS. The title of the book is "The Informant" and the story is about a criminal global corporation, a delusional employee who, at great personal peril, blows the whistle on his employer, and such familiar but shadowy

QUOTE OF THE WEEK Max Sawicky supplies the quote of the week in a steel cage chainsaw death match in the War Street Journal Online. "To conservatives, social democracy is a crisis."

GUESS WHO'S RUNNING THE PENTAGON? It appears that the neocon takeover of the Pentagon is nearly complete, given their response to Seymour Hersh's article about their current machinations vis a vis Iran. We've gone from extra-Pentagon blowhards calling critics of necon war-mongering anti-semitic (or, of course, self-loathing Jews), to official Pentagon spokesbrayers doing the same. The

KING While I've apparently reached my dotage lately and am no longer able to supply my own bile, I can still recognize and appreciate a good fix when I see it. Here's one from the Rude Pundit. ... By this point, King had expanded his fight to include all poverty and the Vietnam War. By this point, he had advocated for guaranteed income. Now, what the fuck do you think King would say

INSIDERS SELLING So what are the insiders doing in the stock market these days? To put it bluntly, the same insiders who want you to buy their stock are selling their stock at levels last observed when the Internet bubble burst in 2000. Executives at United States companies sold stock last year at levels not seen since the bursting of the Internet bubble in 2000. Executive stock

VOLUNTEERS OF AMERICA Dave Lindorff spots another example of a sexy new trend in corporate America: volunteer labor. Wal-Mart's been doing it for years, a bank tried to get off-work employees to stop by and spruce up the areas around their teller machines, and who knows what else is happening in the cabal's America? But you can't argue with the impeccable logic behind it: If the

ANOTHER IMF SUCCESS STORY Max Sawicky explains how Argentina pulled out of economic hell by ignoring the IMF and neoliberalism. I’m about to tell you everything I know about development economics. It isn’t much. My claim is that it consists not of many things, but of a few big things. I feel some confirmation in a story on the front page of the Sunday New York Times, quoting my friend

TOP 10 WAR PROFITEERS OF 2004 The Center for Corporate Policy has released the Top 10 War Profiteers of 2004 list. ... The Professional Services Council, a trade association representing some of the Iraq contractors, says much of the blame can be placed upon "a growing politicization of government procurement," as well as the distance between the procurement planners sitting in

DIGITAL PHOTO EFFECT Now here's something that resonates with someone possessing 13,000 books, 1600 vinyl albums, 700 cassette tapes, 1300 CDs, 150 DVDs and close to a terabyte of stuff about which we'll skip the details. So what do I do? I've estimated that if I consume all my available media options just once apiece and spend 8 hours per day doing so, I'll have to make it to 130 years