Mi Sueño Loco. Min Gale Drømmen. My Crazy Dream.

I find myself in California, flown out by the giant, known-around-the-world tech company I work for and they provide a really nice hotel suite for me and a former colleague named Mini (who actually exists in real life - Hi Mini.) We decide to retire to our respective beds when the door opens and in walk three young, hot IT groupies (oh c'mon, we have groupies too.) They make it very clear what they're after as they go about their mysterious female preparatory rituals before they join us. And I start to get nervous. Because I am engaged and in love and I just can't do that. So as one of them slinks over to me I tell her I can't do that. I swear I heard a needle scratch a vinyl record just like in a movie, her face falls and she backs off. One of her cohort says that my disappointed potential paramour would now have to leave as I've crossed some line with her, and the others would be leaving as well. Now I feel bad. Because my buddy Mini isn't attached or engaged and was really looking forward to this. SO, I say no, don't go, I'll leave and find something to do, even though it's like 3 a.m. Now it takes FOREVER to get dressed and the three young lovelies are looking bored and filing their nails or something. After looking for one shoe for what seems like hours I finally make my way to the door, pausing to throw a wink and a nod at Mini, who seems very appreciative.

On the way out I run into a hallway party. I am introduced to a tall, blond, oddly handsome and very self-assured guy who manages to come off as hipster, rock star, and wealthy suburban youth at the same time. He seems pleased to meet me at first but has to pronounce his name to me four times because it's something weird like Isme or Otma. He's miffed that he has to repeat himself. I take offense and snark how sorry I am that I needed to hear it over and over before I could, you know, actually understand the pretentious name his Norwegian-American parents gave him. Jerk.

I FINALLY run into someone I recognize (cannot now recall who) and we make our way to a designated smoking area (a picnic table and nasty outdoor cigarette disposal thingy's in the middle of a hallway) and I allow myself a cigarette for all I've been through and the fact that I now have to wander for several hours, missing sleep so my colleague can party with three IT groupies (oh c'mon, it could happen.) So I light up a cigarette that magically appears (they are magic...yum...I clearly miss them.) I realize I am also chewing nicotine gum and, fearing a heart attack, I try to spit it out but can't. Great. Then I wake up. Does that mean I died in my dream? That, my friends, figures.

R.E.M. calls it quits

I've spent the last two days home sick. It's the same nasty cold that I've been fighting with since early July. It likes to bring out the big gun of pneumonia so I'm not pushing my luck this time. I'm trying to coddle it, wheedle it into a lull in the hope of getting it to move on.

Bottom line is it makes me feel old. I know I'm not but I've started lately to FEEL old when I'm sick. Now I hear that R.E.M. is calling it quits, which kind of makes me feel old too. You see, I was finishing high school when I first heard of these four men from Georgia, just a few years older than me. What I love about music is while there's the sense that it's already been mined for the good ideas, there are still creative souls out there who have a sound that is theirs alone. R.E.M. was one of those discoveries. They were a revelation. In the small seaside northern California town where I lived, it was hard to find the gems in music at that time. Somehow I discovered and loved punk and these guys were the pivot between punk and alternative rock, just like Devo served that purpose between punk and New Wave. That got my attention. They springboarded me to the next music I'd love, and the next, and the next.

These guys, singer Michael Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry, accompanied me during the many many years I spent on my own. They were a constant in my music library, a band I could always turn to when I couldn't stand listening to anything, when all the other tracks left me indifferent. And as I grew and learned, they did too, releasing tracks that resonated so hard and tapped into whatever personal zeitgeist I was living with at the time. So yeah, this band figures large in my history.

R.E.M. appeared to avoid the many of the traps and misfires of the rock and roll lifestyle. They continued to create music that was theirs alone, then released it to the world. For 31 years. It's inexplicable how they continued, let alone stayed interesting and meaningful. Of course critics haven't liked it all, but this band captured MY attention and interest, at least one cut an album, often many, sometimes all. Of course there will be people who are indifferent, who will comment on their lack of hits and cynically feign surprise that they were still around. Don't care. These guys didn't always have hits or great songs but they were a great band. Because they kept doing it. Until now. Which is okay. People are allowed to retire, even musicians.

My only regret is never seeing them live, especially around the time of the release of Document which, while arguably not their creative peak, certainly primed them for mainstream attention. Among Document's great tracks is "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)." And so, as I started to write this, I played that song, setting iTunes to shuffle my entire library after it. I like starting off with such a fine song and following it with who-knows-what. Good beginnings are so important. As are good endings.

I feel fine.

See this face?

This is Jack Abramoff. Look closely, children, because this face is the one that will bring down Republican control of Congress this year and the Presidency in 2008. Can you say President Clinton again?

In what's shaping up to be an enormous - possibly the biggest ever - case of corruption in DC, Mr. Abramoff pled guilty to numerous charges including corruption of government officials and bribery. He also agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. Can you hear thousands of sphincters in DC simultaneously loosening? Of particular note is this article and especially this article from Forbes.

Oh, the head-rolling and ass covering haven't even begun. What's beautiful about Republicans in power is that they inevitably are their own downfall. The power-hunger and hubris would put the early Greek and Roman playwrights to shame. Let the bastards burn. It's going to be quite a show.

British women

Now, I don't claim to know much about them. They seem interesting - much like women everywhere - and I do find many of them quite attractive (think Kate Winslet.) But I do hear - how shall I put it - how difficult they are. I would imagine a British woman knows quite well how to pitch a fit and make it sound absolutely brilliant. What brought me to this topic? Mil Millington, of course. He's the man behind the phenomenally brilliant Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About. He is British and his girlfriend of many many years (they have children together as well) happens to be German. But he has this to say about British women:

English women, then. If you plot all English women as a line graph, you get a high, thin plateau on which they are electrically wonderful; on both sides of this narrow table there's a sheer plunge down to bottomless awfulness. Off in one direction, a vast, cackling pit of Bacardi Breezers and protectively Band-Aided Achilles tendons. Off in the other, well… Christ. As an illustration, allow me to proffer a tale that someone told me the other day.

A fellow was having sex with an English woman. As he's English himself, he'd probably not have made the distinction - if I'd asked at the time, I'm sure he would have said that he was simply having sex with 'a woman' (and also, 'What the hell are you doing here asking me questions? I thought we'd talked about this.'). That she was, definitively, an English woman, however, was soon made apparent. Because, at the key moment in the proceedings, she shouts this:
"I'm coming, actually!"

Arrrrrrrrgh.

I'm coming, actually. You'd climb off, there and then, and go and re-whiten the grouting in the bathroom instead or something, wouldn't you?

Nice. He remarks that he's had his go with English women and will stick with his German lovemate. Now I happen to have a German mother so I can't quite see eye to eye with him about that. But maybe it's different for them. And she's not his mom. That's gotta make a difference.

His bit about English women reminds me of something from Family Guy:

English man: Almost. Almost. Almost. There we are.
English woman: Well done.

Heh. For those of you keeping track, that's from the first episode this year - indeed, after having been cancelled for 2 years. It's called North By North Quahog and is preceded by Peter telling Lois he's watching some "high class British porn." I lurve that show.

I'm a film guy

As anyone who knows me - really knows me - will tell you. Some people think they know me but they usually have misconceptions as to what I'm all about. And besides being IT-focused (read Mac), sporting a ferocious work persona, and possessing a truly slapstick and goofy sense of humor, I'm all about film. I. Just. Love. Them.

So, I have a website to share with you. It lists the 50 greatest independent films. Interestingly (to Natalie anyway) her favorite is #2 and I like it an awful lot as well.

You may not agree and that's okay. I happen to think they're spot-on. I'm sure I'll come up with several notable absences, but for now I'm happy.

An Open Letter...

I love this site. It's got some of the best satirical writing around. In particular, I urge all to view the open letters section. Here's a particular favorite, entitled An Open Letter to Officials of the United States Government Regarding What's New in My Reproductive Area:

It's summer, so I'm getting my bikini line waxed more frequently. (Ouch!) I had a little urinary-tract infection a while ago, but that seems to have cleared up. Cranberry juice is really something, especially when you're uninsured and can't see the doctor to check out every little searing, stabbing pain. And did you know that yogurt cures yeast infections? If only it cured AIDS, we could patent it and then withhold it from Third World nations.

Mmmmm....trenchant wit! Yummy.

FAUX NEWS

Fair and balanced my ass. The Fox News Channel, and Bill O'Reilly in particular, really really REALLY piss me off. Say what you want about liberal bias in the media but at least the other network news divisions WILL go after a Democrat - see what they did to Clinton. But Fox will not EVER criticize or even look critically at the Republican admnistration or the Republican Congress. Change is gonna come and when it does, the backlash is going to stun and terrorize the Republican lapdogs in the media that is Fox News. Hopefully I'll get to personally kick O'Reilly's ass. He doesn't seem tough at all; he's the man now, dog, when he's the scorekeeper AND the referee in his little fiefdom that is Fox News. What he is, in truth, is a fucking bully. And bullies always crumble in a fair fight.





So, go immediately to Outfoxed. It's a fantastic documentary about how Fox News is effectively the media arm of right wing conservatives. Look at the trailer and clips. And tell everyone you know about it. Shout it from the rooftops.

Never let them alter your image

Wow, two posts in one day! Better pace myself.

So I get this link from a list-serve I subscribe to to which I subscribe. And it has a Flash-based interactive drawing screen. So naturally I must subvert the system:





You'll have to forgive my scrawl. I did it with my right mousing hand and I'm a lefty, a term from which - after reading my blog entries - one can suss nuanced meanings.

Feel free to go there and write your own message. Email the screen capture to me - jonez "at" macdotcom. I'll post the good ones.

Like Shiva looks at a sea slug

Mark Morford and Bill O'Reilly, it can be said, are two extremes of the same continuum. Except the MM uses humor and doesn't scare the hell out of me or make me shake my head - EVER - with his particular style of bombast.

Here's the takeaway, the only thing you need to know: Bill O'Reilly is a walking, snorting cautionary tale. For those of us who occasionally tread similar terrain of barbed political commentary (tempered, I hope, with satire and hope and sex and humor and fire hoses of divine juice), he is the Grand Pariah, the threshold, the Place You Do Not Want To Go as an intellectually curious human soul. He is the guy you can always look to, no matter how bad it gets, and say, Wow, at least I'm not him.

I take it back: they're entirely on different planes of existence:

And any American that undermines that war, with our soldiers in the field, or undermines the war on terror, with 3,000 dead on 9-11, is a traitor. Everybody got it? Dissent, fine; undermining, you're a traitor. Got it? So, all those clowns over at the liberal radio network, we could incarcerate them immediately. Will you have that done, please? Send over the FBI and just put them in chains...