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Tramp

Amy has this old boyfriend, David, who has spent the last decade riding the rails and sleeping under bridges with hobos and tramps. He travels with a MiniDV camera and has shot 200 hours of footage of tramps in their natural habitat. He has spent enough time with them that he’s gained their trust and they’ve come to not even notice the camera, and are completely comfortable around him. The footage he has is amazing. He’s now in the process of editing this footage into a documentary called “Long Gone,” and has 15 indie film companies interested in the project. Tom Waits has given them the rights to use a bunch of unpublished train-related songs. Fantastic project. David passed through town yesterday and spent the day and night with us. Heard so many great stories… such a rich subject to work on. And so few film makers would have the kind of dedication and willingness to completely live that life that David has had. Awesome.

Went with David and Amy yesterday to SF MOMA, came home and ate pad thai and watched some of his rough cuts.

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Get Informed

Why is that right-wingers often use the phrase “Educate yourself” when in arguments with left wingers, as if the right has some kind of grasp of the facts that the left does not. Everywhere in life, people come to different conclusions from the same set of facts. I think Rush Limbaugh started this meme. People call in with leftist ideas, he lays his version of the facts on them, doesn’t let them interject or respond, then says “Get informed” and hangs up. I’ve had this meme layed on me by right wingers about half a dozen times in the past year, and it’s getting tiresome. Then when I give them my version of the facts, they say “I never heard that” or “Prove it” or “Check your sources.” It’s so arrogant.

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Tremendous

Sprinkle my ass… got the firewood in and the sky broke open. Lightning cracking right over the house, everything rumbling. TREMENDOUS! Amy was afraid that Plato got caught out there and was cowering somewhere, getting drenched. Then we found him in the closet, curled up. He never goes in there. Scared shitless, poor guy.

I miss the east coast sometimes. Miss the weather. Living in Australia, too – we had thunderstorms there like none I’ve experienced anywhere else.

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Lightning

Seldom see thunder and lightning around here, but we’re seeing it tonight.  Brought in firewood as it began to sprinkle. Saw a face in the clouds as big as 1/4 sky. It had one eye squinting shut and the other wide open, laughing at me.

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Dark Lantern

Went with to SF to an “artisan audio” a.k.a. “dark lantern” demo and lecture/get-together. This is a branch of high-end audio that has different assumptions and expectations from audio equipment. Rather than focus on benchmarks and graphs, and terms like “accuracy,” it’s all about music and musicality. The equipment they use is often different – they create low-wattage amplifiers with single-ended triode tubes, paired with highly efficient speakers, often with horn, rather than cone designs. What I didn’t expect was that most of these guys (yes, almost 100% guys) are balding (I’m one to talk ;), 40-60 year old electrical engineering dweebs. What a bunch of out-of-shape duck-footed geeks. As baald said, “This gathering is a good argument for a life-long workout routine.” Indeed. Anyway, lots of electrical schematics on chalkboards, etc., all of that stuff is outside my realm of exposure, thus over my head. But damn, some beautiful sounding equipment…


I think that part of what really appeals to me about Bjork is that she is at once so precise and so wild and unchained. I can’t think of another contemporary artist that can do both of those things at once so well, or so uniquely.

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Bomb ’em With Butter

I feel transformed after watching CNN’s “Behind the Veil” last night. I have spent words trying to point out that the U.S. is not blameless, and should re-evaluate its role. While that may still be true, it is also the case that nothing the U.S. has ever done can even remotely be compared to the incredible, seemingly bottomless evil of the Taliban. I’m surprised to hear myself say this, but the Taliban must be eliminated. That’s all there is to it. They simply cannot be allowed to continue their presence on the face of this earth. I can’t even put into words how profoundly disturbing that documentary was. Shot covertly by a female Afghani reporter working under cover, re-assembled into a documentary overseas from smuggled tapes. The world needs to see this documentary to understand. I complain about propaganda, but this documentary is not propaganda. It is the real thing, from the front lines of true and bottomless suffering.

So.

Carpet bombing is not going to work. Ground forces are going to be lost in droves, if history is any lesson. But there is this rising meme floating around: “Bomb ’em with butter.” In other words, fight this war culturally. Give strength to Afghanis to resist against the Taliban, and to align themselves with the Northern Alliance. Send in food, medicine, shelter. Build beautiful mosques for them to pray in. Restore their right to listen to music (that’s right, the Taliban made music illegal), to watch movies (ditto), to read newspapers (ditto again). Protect their 12 year old girls from rape by Taliban soldiers. Give them information, a full belly, a good night’s sleep. Give them a taste of what life could be. Fight this war with culture and solidarity. Create an uprising so large that the Taliban will be squished into irrelevance. Then gather up what’s left of them and throw them into a pit with hungry lions.

It sounds almost strange, but I actually think we’re going to end up doing something like this. It may be the only way.

Please, please watch this documentary. It’s airing again tonight on CNN.

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Derailment Dream

There’s a light on the dashboard of our car that just won’t go out no matter how many times we visit the mechanic. Last night Amy dreamed that a new light suddenly came on. The one that alerts the driver that the body of the car has become detached from the chassis and is hurtling forward off its axles.

My five-year-old, 8-inch plecostamus died recently. I put it in the freezer so Amy could photograph it if she gets a wild hair. Yesterday bought a new one, a young one, just three inches. Will grow it up from a “pup.” This will be the last fish I buy from the old Chinese lady at the dank, smelly aquarium shop across the street. She’s going out of business and retiring. Most of her tanks were empty when I went in yesterday. It’s the worst aquarium shop ever, but I like going there because it’s fun trying to communicate about fish with someone who speaks almost no English at all. Goodbye, old pleco. Goodbye, dank, smelly aquarium lady.

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Navel Lint

Amy said:

“If we go to war I’ll take pictures of it. Then I’ll have something to focus on besides my navel lint.”

Doesn’t that kind of sum it up? Suddenly everything has focus. After how many years of peace time, we have grown complacent. Sitcoms, books, music, all ending up with nothing to say, recycling the same old tropes endlessly, and it’s all been spreading out into brownian motion, losing focus, intensity fading. Now suddenly there’s nothing but focus. It may be coming from the spirit of revenge, it may be less justified than people think (given the degree of our hypocrisy), but it’s undeniable that the country is feeling united more than most people alive today can remember. Everyone has something to think about now. Whether that thinking will amount to anything, whether people will come to realize just how responsible the U.S. is for world anger, is another question.

It is all about anger disguised as righteousness. Think about the last time you had a real knock-down drag-out fight with someone, how your ability to see clearly became clouded. How winning became the only important thing — more important even than being correct. The entire fucking human race is now standing face to face in exactly that kind of argument. One of us is going to have to sleep on the couch.