perfidy

Now THIS is a movie to go see! From the disclaimer at the end of the New York Times review of Clint Eastwood's film Mystic River:

"Mystic River" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has profanity, abundant violence and existential despair.

Existential despair!

No, but really, my compatriot brdgt (not her real name) has posted the review here, and I think you will agree it's well reviewed.

The book, by Dennis Lehane, was superb. Lehane captured the essence of working-class Massachusetts-- insular, fiercely loyal, fucked-up like a family, real-- better than any other author I've read, and early reports from the film (which was shot in Boston) say that Eastwood captured this on screen.

I can't wait! Existential despair, Boston style! And just in time for the Red Sox nation's own annual rite of existential despair, ashes-and-sackcloth wearing, unconsidered recriminations, and drunken, heartbreaking promises that next year, next yeah, Mackie, is gonna be the yeah.

Which it is.

... or at least the perfect sandwich for Scottish people. Disgusting.

The classic cheese and pickle sandwich, eaten in front of the television, has been shown to constitute the ideal sandwich, according to research carried out for British Bread Month.

A nationwide survey quizzed respondents on the ingredients and conditions of the perfect sandwich they made at home and came up with the following equation:

ps = 0.225b + 0.134c + 0.127s + 0.196f + 0.136p +0.181e

The final equation identifies the optimum thickness and type of bread (b), type and thickness of cheese (c), type and thickness of spread (s), additional filling (f), method of presentation (p), and where it should be eaten (e).

The perfect sandwich is made using strong or mature Cheddar on medium, pre-sliced round-top white bread with a thin spread of vegetable margarine, cut diagonally and eaten at home for lunch in front of the television.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong!

White bread: wrong! Margarine!?!??!?? WRONG! Pickle ("chutney")? Meh.

The perfect HOMEMADE sandwich consists of: thinly-sliced very well marbled medium rare roast beef (cold); paper-thin slices of red onion; paper-thin slices of European Swiss cheese; and as much brown mustard containing horseradish as you care to add; all on 2 (two) slices seeded rye bread, lightly toasted if desired. That is all.

Though I will also put in a good word for the Reuben, properly made, any sandwich of roasted vegetables on a baguette, as long as the quality of viniagrette is high, a muffaletta, and hot dogs after drinking.

Every thinking person knows that the perfect STORE-BOUGHT sandwich comes from Primanti Bros. in Pittsburgh, PA, with an honorable mention going to any one of several delicatessens in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic States.

The perfect seafood sandwich is a lobster roll, not too much mayo, hold the celery.

The perfect deadly sandwich is the kabob I had that one time in Glasgow, the one that kept me up all night long and led to a rather humilating episode the next day on the train between Newcastle and Bury St. Edmunds. I had to burn that set of clothes.

I also see, via Macaronies, that 43.6 million Americans don't have health insurance-- an increase of 2.4 million over last year. Though this is short of the 1998 high, this kind of sucks. The main cause is that employers are finding new and exciting ways to deny their workers health care (extending the part-time designation, or just flat out not having a health plan), and the secondary cause is rising unemployment.

Some, like my esteemed coblogger, see this as inherent in the system. I see this as a problem that bears addressing. Basic health care is so simple, and so important, [update: and so expensive!!] that the Good Old Liberal Try seems attractive to me in this case. What do we do? What DO we do? 
 

From the greatest website in Christendom, McSweeney's Internet Tendency:

A N   O P E N   L E T T E R
T O   C H I C A G O
P U B L I C   L I B R A R Y
D E S K   V A N D A L S .
 

BY HOLLY GRIGALUNAS

Dear Vandals,

I write in regard to your collective graffiti displayed on a study carrel — just east of the map collection and through the foreign books — in the Harold Washington branch of the Chicago Public Library. While your detailed Asian fetishes and sketches of generously-endowed hermaphrodites kept me distracted from my primary reading materials for quite some time, I thought you may benefit from a few tips that may better convey your sentiments.

Choose your writing instrument carefully. Markers and Wite-Out will do. Avoid pencil; it rubs off far too easily — "CASTRATE ALL…" what? Your ideal method may be to etch directly into the wood, perhaps with a paperclip or very sturdy ballpoint pen. Along with imbuing a rustic, almost old-timey, timbre to your voice, it may avoid any further confusion over which ethnic group gives the best head.

Secondly, bear in mind that a good majority of people are right-handed, causing most graffiti to become clotted up on the right-hand sides of desks. Writing on the left-hand side will not only set your message apart, but will add a pleasing, feng-shui effect to your canvas. Basically, if you truly want to stress that Scotty does, in fact, take it up the ass —  think left.

Finally, take heed when responding to your fellow vandals' messages. Imagine your fellow vandal has inscribed a bawdy and entirely incorrect statement in pencil, perhaps about his abnormal penis length and the amount of attractive young women who, just last night, took pleasure in every last inch. You must be ambiguous and glib in your response in the event that the initial point of contention rubs off on someone's sweaty forearm, or is lost forever in the terry recesses of the night janitor's rag. Nothing is more bewildering than a "YEAH AFTER YOU PAY THEM CAUSE YOU CAN'T GET ANY FOR FREE," accompanied by a lonesome arrow. A simple "fuck off" or "your mamma is gay" should suffice wonderfully as both a dissenting response and an independent assault.

I do hope you consider these suggestions, not only for the sake of clarity and cohesiveness, but for your own readers' faith in you and your vast affection for young pussy. 

Respectfully,
Holly Grigalunas
Chicago, IL

The world renowned Hindustan Times is reporting that:

Kuwaiti security authorities have foiled an attempt to smuggle $60 million worth of chemical weapons and biological warheads from Iraq to an unnamed European country, a Kuwaiti newspaper said on Wednesday.

A desultory google search showed no other articles on this event. Meanwhile, the long expected Kay report is expected to show no hard evidence of WMD, though many dual use facilities that could be quickly converted to evil uses - and extensive efforts to conceal those capabilities.

The Hindustan Times article came out almost a day ago, its surprising that no other news outlet has commented on it.

In related news, North Korea has three times as many nukes as we thought, and is making more.

Some recovery we're having.

The number of Americans living in poverty increased by 1.7 million last year, and the median household income declined by 1.1 percent, the Census Bureau reported today. The worsening economic conditions fell heaviest on Midwesterners and nonwhites.

It was the second straight year of adverse changes in both poverty and income, the first two-year downturn since the early 1990's.

The data, results of the Census Bureau's annual Current Population Survey, the official barometer for measuring income and poverty rates, showed that lingering negative effects of the recent recession cut across a broad swath of the population.

The official poverty rate rose to 12.1 percent in 2002 from 11.7 percent the year before, bringing to total number of people living below the poverty line to 34.6 million.

The median household earned income fell $500 over the same period to $42,400. Per capita income declined by 1.8 in 2002 to $22,794, the first decline since 1991.

I understand that poverty figures lag behind economic cycles. But add to that the continued shrinkage of the job market, the smaller-than-normal recovery in temp jobs created, and the sullen, mulish instistence of the economy not to get out of first gear for the fictional "Average American," and I get the impression that we're in the doldrums for the long haul.

A slow recovery is much better than a collapse, that much is true. But what worries me is the President's continued insistence that tax cuts will raise revenues faster than the defecit can grow. So far, this economic recovery is substantially different than all others recent in that it's much more modest and compartmentalized. Unfortunately, those recent recoveries are the ones on which the President based his numbers, when he wasn't summoning them from fantasy-land.

This is all bad news for those of us who feel that the President's economic plan is playing Russian roulette with investment rates and eventual inflation. In my unconsidered and thoroughly unprofessional opinion, the spiralling deficit, combined with the flatass nonrecovery we're in, is a bad situation to be in what with the wars on and all. Could this be the Greek-Tragedy Wheel of Fate issue that sinks Bush Jr.?

Yesterday was a day of music blogging, but since today I'm feeling vituperative, I'd like to comment on this.

Senate Republicans, bowing to what appears to be a Senate majority, said Tuesday that they had begun exploring a compromise that would require Iraq to repay at least part of the $20.3 billion in reconstruction aid the Bush administration wants to spend.

So lemme get this straight. We go in and blow hell out of their country. We find that the previous head of household left it a shithole. Said shithole isn't producing revenue fast enough to offset the cost of helping the residents of said shithole survive past age 20. Consequently, we ask the people living in said shithole, who would very much like to ascend to "hovel" or even "happy dwelling" status sooner rather than later, and who have been on the whole most accommodating to our ass-kickery, to come up with the money themselves sometime soon. The money they don't have.

Well ain't that a kick in the fucking head. Maybe the Senate should look into the possibilities of extracting a pound of flesh from each Iraqi citizen instead. Or perhaps traffick in their children. Either way is equally insulting as the actual proposal.

Twenty fucking billion. What is that? The cost of a hammer? A drop in the ocean? Thanks, Senate Democrats, for finding a new low! Thanks, Republicans, for sharing in the discovery!
 

After strenuous interrogation, summary executions, and several six-hour-long mandatory marketing meetings, the HTML gnomes who labor in the stygian depths below the Ministry compound were forced to admit that they had made a dreadful and embarrassing error. That despite having received no instructions to do so, they had utterly and completely failed to adapt the new Perfidy logo to the Perfidy category, as should have been obvious to even your average retarded Ohioan. Behold, the new Perfidy category icon:

This painful mistake is now behind us. A new team of HTML pixies has taken over supervision of the smoking industrial edifice that is the Ministry web server, devotedly feeding it sacrifices of blood and toil to keep it churning away, pounding and shaping the code into the beautiful form you see before you.

[wik] That is now the old Ministry logo, the new one is this:

The Ministry would like to thank, if not actually compensate, the thousands of young children in various third world hell holes that have labored so hard and so well to create the new perfidy gear. The Ministry would also like to commend John Karapelou for his foresightful and compassionate concern for his pets, that resulted in the wondrous Perfidy Logo now available on a variety of consumer goods. 

By clicking here or on the "Perfidious Store Thingy" link to my right, you will be instantly transported to a luscious garden of glorious capitalism. Here you may peruse the garments hand crafted by the nimble fingers of Latin American youths. Here you will see toys manufactured by Chinese criminals paying their debt to soceity. Here you find wonders made possible by your humble servant, the Ministry of Minor Perfidy. 

Shop, and buy. We insist. 

[wik] The future Ministry is considering setting up a new merch emporium. If this should come to pass, you'll see a link in the sidebar menu.

Via Rodney Welch I find the greatest thing I've seen this week, and possibly this year:

Ken Brashear's virtual drumkit.

Enjoy, kids!

It seems that Joe Wilson has something of an agenda. Wilson said:

"Neo-conservatives and religious conservatives have hijacked this administration, and I consider myself on a personal mission to destroy both."

So why was this guy accepting a secret mission from the Bush administration to go to Nigeria in the first place? A lot of people who were aghast at the idea of independent counsels a half decade ago suddenly seem enamored of them now.

And Bob Novak has written another piece, here, that pokes some more holes in the scandal in waiting. But, go ahead, investigate, we need to be sure. But this looks less and less like a story with legs to me.

MIT has expanded significantly the course offerings through its
OpenCourseWare program. Over 500 classes in 33 academic disciplines are now available.

I'm diving into two courses, Systems Analysis of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Numerical Methods of Applied Mathematics I. Exciting and stimulating material. Oh, and I'm going to take Mechanical Assembly and Its Role in Product Development and Beginning Japanese I.

Actually, I think I'm going to check out some of the political science and history stuff. Pretty cool.

In response to Johno's post about Sterling's Luddite screed:

Bruce is an insightful and clever guy, mostly. What he is willfully ignoring here is the provisional nature of all technology. As the Connestoga wagon was relentlessly consumed by the recreational vehicle, so all technologies are on death row, waiting for their final appeal to fail. Then they are replaced by something cheaper, more efficient, or better. These ten technologies are no worse, or better than hundreds of others. What he is offering is a purely aesthetic evaluation of the technologies he'd most like to see replaced by their more advanced descendents.

For example, coal, while not an optimal solution to our energy needs, is a good enough fit that it provides for a quarter of our energy requirements. Certainly, orbital solar power satellites or the perennially twenty-years distant cheap fusion power would be better in most respects. Less environmental impact, cheaper, less waste, and fusion reactors look really cool on the back of a DeLorean. However, the primary stumbling block to the adoption of these superior technologies is that they do not yet exist.

All technologies, with certain exceptions, are awkward compromises between cost, performance, and safety. Like the joke about NASA, "Better, faster, cheaper: pick two." We could all wish for the inhead, superultramegahigh definition tv with the dolbyphonic 9.3 3D surround sound that comes straight from the ether directly into your cranium. And it won't scratch like a DVD! But the premature destruction of these technologies would not advance the process of getting their replacements. With coal, most obviously.

But as a space nut, I take particular exception for his call for the immediate demise of space travel - just as it looks like the whole thing might be going somewhere. Given Sterling's general political leanings, I would think that he would be happy that private grass-rootsy space exploration endeavors are on the verge of actually working. Killing what little we have now would make it impossible to get to the next, better stage.

On the topic of the Blues and music industry perfidy, Fat Possum Records has a page up on their site taken from the New York Times explaining why Fat Possum Artists didn't participate in Martin Scorcese's "The Blues."

It boils down to this: Fat Possum treats their artists well, and didn't think that the rates the producers were offering for use of the music were close to fair. The publishers for the film-makers responds, as does Bobby Rush.

Last night I was idly flipping channels before hitting the sack when I came upon the third episode of Martin Scorsese's The Blues, directed by Richard Pearce.

Fuck.

The Blues is a gigantic thing that most people (and most fans for that matter) never explore beyond the tourist areas populated by the national-touring giants of the trade. I personally started out with Hendrix, Stevie Ray, BB King, and Robert Johnson, and had to blaze my own path into the high weirdness from there.

My favorite blues-- the realest stuff-- are the performances that seem just a little tacky, and the singers who are too weird to be true. If I'm not a little repelled, yet totally drawn in, it's probably not hitting the mark. For my recorded fix, I'm a huge fan of everything put out by the people at Fat Possum, from the white-boy skronk of the Black Keys (hello, Akron!) to the offkey broken-down shambling of Bob Log III and Cedell Davis. I will make exceptions to this rule to include the transcendendental players like Guitar Slim or Robert Cray, who can help you achieve enlightenment with one bent note. But in general, the weirder the better.

Consequently I was a little afraid that Martin Scorsese would do to the Blues what he did to New York in 1863. That is, I was afraid he'd make it visceral, dirty, and cruel but then fuck it up by using electro-trance music and casting beautiful people. HA! Could I BE more wrong?

I flip on WGBH. The Blues. Onscreen, Bobby Rush is dressed in a red, blue, and gold silk brocade shirt and electric blue hip-huggers. His head sports jheri-curl. He is playing to a mixed-race audience in a bowling alley, and singing a song called "Pecked by the Right Hen." The crowd is going apeshit. Bobby stalks the makeshift stage like a lion tamer, working the crowd. The crowd works back. Then the camera pans right, and we see the sight. A young, schoolmarmish woman has jumped onstage and is shaking her booty at the crowd, such booty-shaking as to make a Pastor recant. She shakes and shakes and shakes and shakes and shakes and it becomes clear that Bobby Rush is taming no lion... he's only hoping to contain the booty. Bobby sings to the booty. Bobby talks to the booty. Bobby begs the booty for a little mercy. Bobby introduces the booty to the crowd, and the crowd hollers back. Bobbys's shirt slithers and shimmers like it's going to take a verse. All the while, this woman shakes her ass like it's on hinges.

Bobby finishes the song, and we cut to church. Bobby Rush, in a nice brown suit with a gold tie, grinning and mouthing the pastor's words as he sings a gospel song. Intercut a tour-bus interview in which Bobby Rush explains that the same people who are out on Saturday are in Church on Sunday, the only difference being to whom they are petitioning for salvation.

And that's it. You better BELIEVE I'll be tuning in for every remaining episode, and buying this set on DVD. The soundtrack? Ehhh, maybe, if I get tired of my Otha Turner bootlegs.

For me, it's nice to sit in BB King's Blues Club among velvet curtains, dine on a twenty-dollar steak and take in a show by the great Duke Robillard. It's even okay to sit in a Texican joint in Marblehead, Massachusetts as the Cat Sass Blues Band pounds the joy out of "Got My Mojo Working." But goddamn it if the bowling alley isn't the place to be. It's what Greil Marcus called the "old, weird America," and it do feel a bit like home.

[update] Cross-posted to blogcritics.

I'm not so sure what to make of this. Science Fiction great Bruce Sterling has an article in the "Technology Review" titled "Ten Technologies That Deserve To Die."

His list, without his explanations:

• Nuclear Weapons
• Coal-Based Power
• The Internal Combustion Engine
• Incandescent Lightbulbs
• Land Mines
• Manned Space Flight
• Prisons
• Cosmetic Implants
• Lie Detectors
• DVDs 

Wha? 

The automobiles are scaring the horses! Where are my pants? Now, I'm with Brucie on removing land mines, lie detectors, and perhaps maybe newcular weapons from the minds and hands of man, but what the hell? If you read the list closely, Sterling isn't so much arguing that all these technologies are EVIL, per se, (though he certainly has a hate on for coal power and the light bulb), as arguing that they are deeply flawed temporary solutions to problems that will one day be solved through the power of... technology. No argument there, but the whole thing seems a little overheated, not to mention unexpectedly curmudgeonly, coming from someone who once fell in love with the revolutionary possibilities of the fax machine.

[update] Now, with working link! 

I have gotten so tired of entering my name and address for interweb registrations that I went to the post office website to look up the zip code for 1060 W. Addison, so that I could consistently enter the same incorrect information for all these nosy marketroid dungbreros. In fact I encourage, nay, insist that from now on everyone should enter the following personal information:

Dick M. Stickrod *
[a valid email address]
1060 W. Addison
Chicago, IL 60613

If they ask for more info:

Female
birthdate - 01/01/1901
Income Range - as close to zero as possible, or the highest.
For the rest, whatever feels right.

* An actual person. I sold him five triple pane vinyl replacement windows with the optional low-E coating for ultraviolet protection. It took me three days before I could look at the name without breaking into laughter, or tears. Three abortive attempts to call before I got through without choking. Nice guy, a bit defensive about his name. But, it's Dick, not Richard, Rich or Rick.

I hadn't looked at the Onion in a while, but this made me titter:

*

I have been guilty of #1, 2 and 5. My favorite part of the Onion has always been the headlines on the right sidebar. Couple good ones in the most recent issue:

• Wildfire Somehow Rages Back Into Control
• Eiffel Tower Washes Up On Delaware Beach

Fun, fun, fun

[wik] From the distant vantage point of the far-future Ministry, the nature of that image is entirely unknown, and unknowable.

Wis ze bang, and the boom, and the boom boom boom boom bang?!

A Texas high school has apologized after the school band waved a Nazi flag during a performance on Friday, the start of the Jewish New Year holiday of Rosh Hashana. "We had an error in judgment," band director Charles Grissom told the Dallas Morning News. . . . 

During a half-time show, a student from Paris High School went running across the field waving a Nazi flag. At the time, the Blue Blazes band was playing the composition by Franz Joseph Haydn that eventually became known as Deutschland Uber Alles . . . .

Let's hear it for the Paris, Texas Marching Band, winner of the September 2003 Perfidy Prize in Inadvertent or Vertent Asshattery. Congratulations, Asshats!

This was the bright idear, which must have looked great on paper: "[Grissom] said it was part of a show entitled "Visions of World War Two," in which the flags and music were intended to represent the warring nations." During Rosh Hashanah. Terrible, terrible timing.