Panther Purr

Of all the Jacksons, I prefer Michael and Janet. I tend to go for Michael's harder side, as in "Beat It" (with Eddie Van Halen's smokin' guitar solo) and "Dirty Diana." But Janet, for all her r&b and dance roots, had flashes of a rockergrrl persona. Never was this more in evidence than "Black Cat."

This was a supposedly "live" performance from the 1990 Video Music Awards (although I have grave doubts, especially since her vocal performance is exactly the same as on the record). Oh well. That was sort of the Milli Vanilli lipsync era anyway. Even if it is lipsynced, it's still a kickass song, and interestingly, it's one she wrote herself.

Don't understand why you insist
On ways of living such a dangerous life
Time after time, you stay away
And I just know that you're telling me lies

Black cat, nine lives, short days, long nights
Living on the edge, not afraid to die
Heartbeat, real strong but not for long
Better watch your step or you're gonna die

Yeah, it's not overly deep or profound, but matched with that awesome guitar riff, it made your ears bleed.

"He Who Fights With Monsters"

"Gun control? We need bullet control! I think every bullet should cost 5,000 dollars. Because if a bullet cost five thousand dollars, we wouldn't have any innocent bystanders."  ~ Chris Rock

The Absolute Last Word on the Colorado Shooting, by Jim Wright.

This is the cost of civilization, right? Twelve more dead kids in a movie theater. That’s freedom, right there. That’s liberty. That’s America goddamn it. That’s what I spent my whole life in uniform defending, the right to have twelve more slaughtered innocents and blood running in the streets. 

You just can’t stop it.  Crazy people with guns and random carnage are the price you pay so that the rest of us can be free.

Seriously? That’s your solution? 

Armor up and shoot it out?

Read. The. Whole. Thing.

"Any of you boys want to shoot, now's the time"

Science fiction writer Adam-Troy Castro writes a chilling tale of exactly what would have happened if some wannabe-Rambo had whipped out his substitute dick in that crowded Aurora theater and tried to take the shooter out.

Shorter version: a lot more people would have died.

Because the theatre is dark and Holmes is wearing black and the air is full of smoke and not everybody knows where the original shots came from, the firing continues anyway. There are now people shooting from six locations in the auditorium, indeed the four corners of the auditorium, a pattern that no organized military commander would ever sanction and which has the effect of the famed circular firing squad. In the next ten seconds or so, three of the gun wielders fire wildly, two others to greater effect, one more shouting at the others to hold their fire dammit, because the bad guy is down. Another half dozen innocents go down, two fatally. The sitrep in the theatre is now full-on panic, people climbing over another in their passion to escape, some of them going down because they happen to flee toward a disoriented shooter who interprets their advance as assault. More woundings. More deaths.


Holmes gets up, sees what’s happening, and grins like the loon he is, because his plan has succeeded greater than his wildest imagination. He styles himself The Joker and is pleased to see that his vicious prank has had an effect the comic-book and movie Joker would have proved. He empties a clip into the head of a child and, what the hell, let us not imbue all of our alternate-world shooters with too much incompetence, goes down with a bullet through the neck, dead. This is not NECESSARILY what would happen, of course -- remember, he is armored, and he is wearing a gas mask, and is the only person in the auditorium not disoriented, and chances are that he will continue to fire at an audience already busily engaged in slaughtering itself, but we cannot continue this fantasy with the premise that return fire continues to miss him, because all the people who wish the theatre goers were armed will otherwise erupt with rage at what they perceive as me stacking the deck. So, okay: a brilliant shot, from a guy in the back who sees his opportunity and takes it, and who puts the bad guy down with a one-of-a-kind genius act of marksmanship, that ends his threat forever. I will give you that much, because it’s the fantasy you want.


(snip)


The shooting goes on for another full minute after James Holmes is dead. He only got about half the people he got in our own tragic version of events. However, his mission has been completed by others, in the meantime, who not only matched his total in our universe, but exceeded it. Twenty dead, another eighty wounded, more than half of them by friendly fire. 

Gee. That improved things.

Because of this idiotic fantasy, we can't have meaningful gun control in this country.

"Today is a Day of Reckoning"

(Yes, I'm one day late again. I was wrestling with the computer again last night.)

If you listen to country music, you know the songs are not about beer, blondes and big trucks, not anymore. I think some of the best songwriters in the world work in Nashville, and they're tackling numerous important topics--including domestic violence, as Gretchen Peters does in Martina McBride's "Independence Day." This is a harrowing "Burning Bed"-style tale of an abused wife who burns down the house--with her husband and herself inside--rather than take any more beatings. Martina McBride does a great job with the song. (Some background on the song and writer here.)


Apparently the video caused something of a stir when it was released. I couldn't find an embeddable "official" version on YouTube, so here's a link to CMT.


Here's a bonus treat--Martina singing "Independence Day" with one of her idols, Pat Benatar.

This is not an easy song to listen to, but it's certainly better than any Justin Bieber fluff. 
 

Asshat of the Day

Arizona voters recalled Russell Pearce specifically because of the "papers please" law, not because of his general wingnut stupidity. So at least he's gone, for now. Unfortunately, he's still stupid.

Russell Pearce Blames Aurora Victims for Massacre

It's a good thing Salil Kapur grabbed a screencap, because the post has now vanished.

What a heart breaking story. Had someone been prepared and armed they could have stopped this "bad" man from most of this tragedy. He was two and three feet away from folks, I understand he had to stop and reload. Where were the men of flight 93???? Someone should have stopped this man. Someone could have stopped this man. Lives were lost because of a bad man, not because he had a weapon, but because noone was prepared to stop it. Had they been prepared to save their lives or lives of others, lives would have been saved. All that was needed is one Courages/Brave man prepared mentally or otherwise to stop this it could have been done. 

This is so disgusting, and makes me so angry, I can hardly gather my thoughts to respond.

First of all: This was a midnight showing, on a weekday night, of a very popular movie. To attend said screening armed to the teeth,  just in case a domestic terrorist walked in and started shooting, requires a level of paranoia that simply does not exist among the general populace. Nor should it.

Secondly: The people of flight 93 (not just men, mind you) had quite some time to think about, talk out, and plan what they were going to do. They had been in touch with their relatives via cell phone; they knew the towers had gone down, and they were on a flight from which there would be no return, either way. This is orders of magnitude different from someone storming a theater and mowing down 71 people in a matter of minutes, in the dark, with tear gas and people stampeding and screaming and slipping on a floor slick with blood. "Someone should have stopped this man," my gold-plated ass. It's vile to even make the comparison.

Thirdly: As has been pointed out by people far more knowledgeable about guns than myself, it would have been impossible to make such a shot anyway, even if the gunman had not been body-armored to the gills. The shooter had all the advantages, and there was nothing anyone could have done. It's as simple as that.

(Of course, what Russell Pearce is really saying here is that if he had been in that theater, by God and the Stars and Stripes, he and his extra-long John Wayne dick would have taken that mofo out. Even if he managed to kill ten more people along the way.)

After this, in a follow-up post, Pearce complains about being "mischaracterized." Sure. He then deletes both posts, so you can't be mean to him any more, wah wah wah.

To borrow a line from President Obama's great ad, Russell Pearce isn't the solution. He's the problem.

Two Comments on the Colorado Shooting

From John Cole at Balloon Juice:

It occurred to me tonight that we live in a country where the Supreme Court has decided the 1st amendment does not give you the right to yell “fire” in a crowded movie theatre, but the 2nd Amendment gives you an unfettered right to amass enough guns to shoot 71 people in the same theatre.

No wonder Europeans think Americans are fucking stupid.

Amen, brother.

My two cents: If I had a time machine, I would visit the Founding Fathers and ask them, nay, beseech, implore and beg them, not to write the 2nd Amendment into the Constitution.

It's more trouble than it's worth.

Awesome Bravo Badass Amplification

Yes, I like Abba, even with their silly backwards B.

I know some people think they embodied everything that was wrong about the 70's: slick and overproduced, with two female singers who didn't even know the English language and were singing everything by rote, leaving no depth or emotion to their music at all. Hell, there might even be something to that.

Then I listen to a song like "Chiquitita" and I don't give a crap.

 

It's far and away my favorite Abba song. I know everybody thinks about "Dancing Queen" when they think of Abba (even Newt Gingrich, with his incongruous ringtone) but "Chiquitita" has that infectious Spanish rhythm that worms its way inside your skull and won't come out. I'll admit this is a particularly bad video, with poor editing, lousy direction and not even a cursory attempt to match the guitar-strumming and piano-picking to the actual music (it doesn't look like the so-called "keyboardist" has touched a key in his life), but then again, them's certainly the piss-poor 70's video breaks. (The only exception to that, as far as I can see, is the iconic video for Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody.")

It really doesn't matter. Just close your eyes and listen to the actual song. That's what I do. I defy your toes not to start tapping and your arms to start swinging.

My Kingdom for a House

Mitt Romney has six houses.

What in the hell do you do with six houses?

I live in Arizona, and I can just barely imagine having two houses. One in the southern part of the state for winter, and one in the northern part of the state for summer, and roughly splitting one's time between them. Given that this week, before the monsoons started, the temperatures in Bullhead City and Lake Havasu were 121/122 degrees, I can easily see how having a summer home might literally be the difference between life and death.

Still, even that evokes possessing a wad of cash I don't think I'll have in my lifetime.

But...six? Supposedly he has two homes in Boston. Two? Did either Mitt or Ann, or both, not want to bruise their exquisite manicures by driving so far one day, and just decide to buy another house?

Two vacation homes on New Hampshire lakes? Did they ever hear of the old-fashioned concept called "motel rooms?" Or even "vacation rentals?" But of course, the yacht would have been missing its separate gold-plated residence, and maybe Rafalca would have been kicking down the walls of her too-small (normal-sized) stall. Those are adequate reasons to buy another half-million-dollar lakeside vacation home, I'm sure.

Furthermore, how do you plan for the logistics of moving between six houses? Do you wake up in the morning and say, "My tummy hurts, so we need to go to the house in La Jolla?" Or do you notice that a flake of snow might've fallen in Utah, and take off for the ski lodge? (Which might be a pretty rare thing, once climate change really takes hold.) Do you own six separate sets of clothes, bedding, towels, and cookware, so each house is furnished identically to the one you just left, and you don't have to worry about finding your favorite tea mug, and can slide right into your best suit? Do you have six sets of books, CDs, DVDs and Netflix subscriptions, so you can have your favorite music and comfort reads, and don't miss your favorite TV programs? Do you have six iPhones and six iPods, and six laptops, one for each house, with identical programs, and music and documents all linked through the cloud? Also, what happens to the food in each refrigerator? Do you pack it up and take it along (although that sounds horribly common, moving your food along with you when you can just buy more). If not, who cleans out each refrigerator after you leave? For that matter, who scrubs the toilets, winterizes the homes if you're not there, waters the plants, washes the windows, maintains the landscaping, locks the doors at night, and leaves the houses in perfect pristine condition so you can come through on your brief sojourns, take a deep breath and look around, and say with a sigh of satisfaction, "This is my home?"

I'll tell you who. Those invisible underpaid servants you never see (also known as "ordinary people"), because you're running for office, for Pete's sake.

I have as much in common with Mitt Romney and his merry clan of arrogant moneybots as I do an alien species. Maybe less.

Amercia the Beautiful

This ad left me jumping up and down and squealing with glee. Fan-frakking-tastic.



And the Romneybot's head went flying in one direction, its body in another, leaving nothing but scorched earth and burnt wires in between.

"It was a pleasure to burn"

“No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?”  ~George Orwell, Animal Farm

“The point is, there is no feasible excuse for what are, for what we have made of ourselves. We have chosen to put profits before people, money before morality, dividends before decency, fanaticism before fairness, and our own trivial comforts before the unspeakable agonies of others.”  ~Iain Banks, Complicity

Scare-mongering?

Damn straight.

Joe Biden lays out Mitt Romney's dystopian Presidential horror show.

Imagine what the Supreme Court will look like after four years of Governor Romney. Imagine what it will act like. Imagine what it will mean for civil rights, voting rights, and so much we have fought so hard for. Imagine a Justice Department that supports, rather than challenges, continued efforts to suppress the right to vote. Because that’s what will happen if they win.

The Hunger Games, anyone? (Minus our female saviour, because she'll be perpetually barefoot and pregnant.) Yes, it's a good book, but I don't imagine Suzanne Collins wrote it with the idea of being a prophetess.

 

"You know they've got a helluva band"

There are many musicians who have left us way too soon. Most of us talk about the "Big J's"--Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, John Lennon. In recent months, Whitney Houston. There are others, in musical genres I don't pay much attention to. Tupac Shakur, for instance. Biggie Smalls.

Then there are those who nobody hears about, but when you look at what they did in their short time on earth you know a wonderful light has left us. 


Such a person was Dave Carter, folk singer. I had never heard of him before he came up on one of my Pandora stations--I believe it was my Emmylou Harris station. At any rate, I didn't know he or his partner, Tracy Grammer, from Adam's off ox. But his lyrics instantly captivated me. When you're in the presence of a master wordsmith, you know it. 


This is one of my favorite Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer tunes. It's not a real video as such; it's merely the CD cover art as background to the song, "41 Thunderer." But oh, what a song. You have to listen to it several times for the depth of the lyrics to really sink in, and I'm still finding delightful little asides and nuances, even after hearing this song dozens of times.


    


Here are samples of the verses: 


In fair silver city on the blind side of fate 
I grew up to manhood on the narrow and straight 
But prideful I stumbled, and foolish I fell 
In the silken fine trammels of a cruel Yankee belle 


 Slender and wicked, flame in her eyes 
Pearl white and nickel round the curve of her thighs 
Smooth as dry whiskey, but cold to caress 
She slid like a viper from her tooled leather dress
 
Oh forty-one thunderer, colt repeater 
She's a silver-tongued wonder and a mean mistreater 
Six-eyed delilah, brazen and bold 
Now it's stand and deliver, fire in the hole 
Forty-one thunderer turn loose of my soul


These gorgeous lyrics ("silken fine trammels," "smooth as dry whiskey"--poetry. Absolute poetry) are matched with Tracy Grammer's wonderful violin work. She produces a fiery, gritty solo that for my money is almost as good as David Gilmour's spectacular lead guitar in "Comfortably Numb." I wasn't sure if I liked this song at first, but after repeated listenings I wouldn't trade it for anything. 

Dave Carter died ten years ago. What a loss. If there's any justice, he's with the Helluva Band, teaching Jimi Hendrix a thing or two about subtlety.

Asshat of the Day

This woman.


As protesters assembled on a beach in advance of Mitt Romney's evening event at the home of conservative billionaire David Koch, the candidate slipped to East Hampton for his first of three fundraisers on this tony stretch of Long Island. 


The line of Range Rovers, BMWs, Porsche roadsters and one gleaming cherry red Ferrari began queuing outside of Revlon Chairman Ronald Perelman's estate off Montauk Highway long before Romney arrived, as campaign aides and staffers in white polo shirts emblazoned with the logo of Perelman's property -- the Creeks -- checked off names under tight security. 


A New York City donor a few cars back, who also would not give her name, said Romney needed to do a better job connecting. "I don't think the common person is getting it," she said from the passenger seat of a Range Rover stamped with East Hampton beach permits. "Nobody understands why Obama is hurting them.


"We've got the message," she added. "But my college kid, the baby sitters, the nails ladies -- everybody who's got the right to vote -- they don't understand what's going on. I just think if you're lower income -- one, you're not as educated, two, they don't understand how it works, they don't understand how the systems work, they don't understand the impact."


Ma'am, I'll tell you what.

If you think there's something about this election I don't understand, then I challenge you to explain it to me.

I challenge you to get in your Range Rover and drive across the country to my house (oh, pardon me, my manufactured home)--yes, drive, not fly, because I really think you need to get your head out of your ass and see how the "common people" live (and you're not allowed to whine about gas prices in your 14 mpg, $80,000 vehicle along the way)--and explain to me just how you think President Obama is hurting me.

I'd like for you to explain to me how it hurts me for the President to have saved the auto industry.

I'd like for you to explain to me how it hurts me for the President to have ended the war in Iraq.

I'd like for you to explain to me how it hurts me for the President to have ended "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

I'd like for you to explain to me how it hurts me for President Obama to have signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

I'd like for you to explain to me how it hurts me for President Obama to have killed Osama bin Laden.

Finally, I'd like for you to explain to me just why it's oh so sad that you, as a millionaire, pay one of the lowest tax rates in history.

Since you have such a high opinion of my intelligence, I'll even let you use words of one syllable.

And when you're done with all that, I'd really like for you to explain to me why you're such a stupid, clueless, arrogant, condescending jackass.

Thank you.

"True freedom is to share all the chains our brothers wear"

"Freedom would be meaningness without security in the home and in the streets."  ~Nelson Mandala

The evolution of modern Republican thought.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If, God and the Flying Spaghetti Monster forbid, Mitt Romney gets in the White House, I fully expect him to push legislation to repeal EMTALA. Gotta get rid of all those freeloaders piling into the emergency rooms, you know.

The cruelty and inhumanity of these people, all in the name of "freedom," is monstrous.

 

 

Asshat of the Day

Ian Shapira, for writing this idiotic article for the Washington Post.


Shiver or swelter?


It is a question that hardly anyone who has endured both Snowmageddon and Derecho Damnation wants to confront, if only because the question itself triggers its own torment.


In these end times, when the power goes out for what feels like forever, which form of suffering is more painful: freezing temperatures or triple-digit heat? In Washington, where caveats and serious deliberation reign supreme, many veterans of prolonged outages can’t summon a clear-cut answer.

He then rambles on about the most desirable ways to die (throwing in a bit of chain-saw decapitation for shits and giggles), finally coming down on the side of freezing to death.

Oh, for frak's sake. Is this a waste of typeface or what?

Why don't you try this idea on for size, Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky. Maybe if our elected officials would pull their heads out of their asses and actually do something about climate change, we wouldn't have to worry about either one of these grisly ends.

Cripes.

"One quarter flash and three parts foolish"

There's something to be said for one-hit wonders. Singers or bands that produce one or two well-known songs and quietly fade away. More than anything else, I think, they're a product of their time; a flash in the pan inextricably linked to an event, an emotion, or a person, that varies for each of us who remembers them.

Such a band is Quarterflash.

I remember them appearing on American Bandstand in the early 80's, and lead singer/saxophonist Rindy Ross describing how they got their name: from the old saying that is the title of this entry. I loved their name; it was clever, and since the only other "Q" artists I knew of were the incomparable Queen (and, later on, Queensryche), they were in pretty rarefied air. Not to mention that Rindy played a frakking instrument instead of standing there with cutesy blond 80's hair wielding a microphone.

(Of course, Joan Jett was soon to come along and smash that stereotype anyway.)



This song is interesting to me because of the guitar solo. It almost has a keyboardish-edge to it, as if the guitar was being channeled through one of those "guitar synthesizers" Judas Priest would use on Turbo. I know they got slammed for that, but I personally think "Turbo Lover" is an awesome song (and I will tap it for a Musical Monday one of these days). The interplay between the "Find Another Fool" guitar and saxophone was pretty good, and this song just flat out rocked.

I never hear it on the radio nowadays, and the band has faded into obscurity. Probably most of my readers won't know who the hell I'm talking about. Such is the fate of growing older. Just remember, kidlets, it happens to everybody.

Asshat of the Day

Mitch McConnell, who thinks that 30 million uninsured people "is not the issue." 


MCCONNELL: Well first let me say the first single thing we can do for the American system is get rid of ObamaCare. … The single biggest direction we can take in terms of improving health care is to get rid of this monstrosity. [...] 


WALLACE: But you’re talking about repealing and replace, how would you provide universal coverage? 


MCCONNELL: I’ll get to it in a minute. [...]


WALLACE: I just want to ask, what specifically are you going to do to provide universal coverage to the 30 million people who are uninsured? 


MCCONNELL: That is not the issue. The question is, how can you go step by step to improve the American health care system. … We’re not going to turn the American health care system into a Western European system.

(No matter how much better a Western European system would be, by the way. We're just not going to do it because...that's not the issue, so shut up!)

As someone once wrote (and I'll be hanged if I can remember who it was, and Google is no help; so if you know, please tell me), "There is no hole that goes so far, or is so forever unending, as an asshole."