Happy Valentine's Day!

Oh My Love - John Lennon

Videos of the year

My usual criteria for "best video" is: the one I listened to the most, after I first posted it. This year, departing a bit, and starting with CUTEST VIDEO OF THE YEAR!

Or the decade, maybe.

Their little tails are so adorable!!! SQUEE!

Hopping goats (they're babies!!!! Ohhh my gaaaawwwwwddd!)



Funniest video, I found over at Tumblr, so unfortunately, not sure how to transfer it over here. So HERE is the link. Shake it off, shake it off... (I'm sure I've seen that guy.)

~*~

And here is Dead Air's official VIDEO OF THE YEAR. The thing is, I neglected to post it, just listened to it a bunch of times. Luckily, I can rectify that now. NOTE: The song is only about 4 minutes long (if that), but this video length is over 8 minutes. (?) The last 4 minutes are just silent. Not sure what's up with that... but the song itself isn't long.

It's totally addictive to anyone (like me) who grew up listening to old country music and slide guitars!

Ray Wylie Hubbard - Three Days Straight



I went down to see the fortune teller
was gonna get my future read
She looked at my hand, she said its bad
Crossed her eyes and fell back dead

I hate it when that happens.

Commercial: Tonight, WNCW-FM features the annual Warren Haynes Christmas pre-jam rebroadcast at 8pm EST, so tune in all you jambandz fans. (livestreaming HERE)

Happy Deadhead New Year, yall!

Merry Christmas from the Family

We featured all of these songs on our Christmas-edition radio show, broadcast on Monday, December 23rd. (It was just me and Gregg, and it was Double-A's turn to take a break.)

Hope you all have happy holidays, as we continue to Occupy the Microphone for another year.

~*~

Merry Christmas from the Family - Robert Earl Keen



~*~

Merry Xmas Everybody - Slade



~*~

I believe in Father Christmas - Greg Lake



~*~

Slipping into Christmas - Leon Russell

Sunday links and round-up

At left: State Senator Karl B. Allen, District 7, was one of our guests on Wednesday's edition of OCCUPY THE MICROPHONE.

~*~



Wednesday's radio show was titled, "Putting the brakes on violence in South Carolina"-- and many community activists were highlighted, as they shared their personal experiences with our listeners. (Our guests also included Traci Fant, one of my favorite people and local powerhouse activist.)

This was a major landmark for us; I don't remember having that many people in the studio at once before! Gregg was absent, so it was all up to me and my fearless co-host, Double-A.

If you'd like to listen to the show, check us out at our radio blog. And remember to catch us everyday, LIVE AT FIVE, livestreaming HERE.

~*~

Interesting links, that I meant to share earlier:

Yes, I'm nothing if not prompt!

[] Worst house you've ever seen. (Curbed) Really! Apparently, it was designed by a pimp, and ... well ... it totally defies description.

It seems to be hemorrhaging money, too, which just makes it all the more incredibly bad.

[] For the two or three of my readers who are theory-heads: Marxist feminism as a critique of intersectionality. (Neo-colonialism and its discontents). I have some issues with intersectionality (the new trend in feminism, and suddenly everyone's new favorite word) and Will Shetterly accurately outlines some of my issues HERE.

[] Ayn Rand-loving CEO destroys his empire (Salon) If you've been wondering what's wrong with Sears, and why it looks like a dump these days, here's your answer.

Something else to blame on Ayn Rand.

[] Peter O'Toole has passed on, and here is a pretty good obit. (Los Angeles Times) I loved him in the film The Stunt Man, and if you've never seen it, you might want to hunt it down for a viewing. It's rather surreal, and O'Toole is perfect.

[] Why we need grandpas and grandmas (NPR) Required reading if you are an animal lover, or an anti-ageism activist... or both.

[] And finally: here is your DEAD FROM CUTENESS pre-Christmas video. I've been posting it everywhere, so if you've seen it already, you can probably blame me! (I want that puppy!)

~*~

CAR OF THE MONTH: Buick LeSabre, outside the Publix.

What year? Not sure, but appears to be Third Generation, possibly 1971. If anyone has any better estimates, let me know.

(((waves to car-photo lurkers and wishes you all Happy Motoring Holidays!)))

~*~

Hope you are all doing well at this crazy hectic time of year. I attended a great Solstice/Yule celebration last night, although I passed a dead body (covered up) in the road on my way there, which brought me up short and reminded me of what's important.

Gratitude.

Happy holidays!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I used to run this comic every year at Thanksgiving... and I still get hits from all the occasions I've posted it in the past. So I decided to take it out of mothballs for the new vegetarians having their very first meatless Thanksgiving.

Welcome!

~*~



Leave the turkey alone! He/she is innocent and didn't do anything to YOU!

~*~

See yall in a few days, when I get back from wonderful Hotlanta.

Radio radio - update from the airwaves!

At left: Efia Nwangaza at the Multicultural Festival on June 27th.


Local Occupier, powerhouse Civil Rights attorney and director of the Malcolm X Center for Self Determination, Efia was on our July 4th radio show -- #Restorethe4th -- wherein we discussed reclaiming the 4th Amendment.





Efia was also on yesterday's show, greatly assisting us in our interview with Ralph Poynter, spouse of activist lawyer Lynne Stewart, who is suffering from advanced-stage cancer and currently seeking compassionate release from federal prison. There are two national support rallies for Lynne today (in New York City and Los Angeles) and one on Friday (in Washington, DC); please go to LynneStewart.org to sign the petition and learn more about her case. There are names and numbers to call, and much work to do.

We thank Ralph for being on our show and laying out the case so well.

Today: Bradley Manning, Ariel Castro, force-feeding Muslims during Ramadan at Guantanamo, and other timely topics on OCCUPY THE MICROPHONE, live at five!

Broadcasting from McAlister Square in Greenville, to all points of upstate South Carolina, all the way to Gaffney. Live streaming available at WOLI AM, so give us a listen.

Pope trashes capitalism for the New Year

At left: I know he is technically Pope Benedict XVI, but to me, he will always be Cardinal Ratzinger, ideological hit-man for the Vatican.

And today, he did some ideological sermonizing that few expected. Now, this is the kind of New Year's Day sermon I can get behind.

Lots of people are surprised, quoting and misquoting right and left (if you'll pardon the expression) and so I went to the Vatican website to get the actual text verbatim:

[The] world is sadly marked by hotbeds of tension and conflict caused by growing instances of inequality between rich and poor, by the prevalence of a selfish and individualistic mindset which also finds expression in an unregulated financial capitalism, as well as by various forms of terrorism and crime, I am convinced that the many different efforts at peacemaking which abound in our world testify to mankind’s innate vocation to peace. In every person the desire for peace is an essential aspiration which coincides in a certain way with the desire for a full, happy and successful human life. In other words, the desire for peace corresponds to a fundamental moral principle, namely, the duty and right to an integral social and communitarian development, which is part of God’s plan for mankind. Man is made for the peace which is God’s gift. All of this led me to draw inspiration for this Message from the words of Jesus Christ: ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God’ (Mt 5:9)

...

The splendour of the face of God, shining upon us and granting us peace, is the manifestation of his fatherhood: the Lord turns his face to us, he reveals himself as our Father and grants us peace. Here is the principle of that profound peace – “peace with God” – which is firmly linked to faith and grace, as Saint Paul tells the Christians of Rome (cf. Rom 5:2). Nothing can take this peace from believers, not even the difficulties and sufferings of life. Indeed, sufferings, trials and darkness do not undermine but build up our hope, a hope which does not deceive because “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us” (5:5). May the Virgin Mary, whom today we venerate with the title of Mother of God, help us to contemplate the face of Jesus, the Prince of Peace. May she sustain us and accompany us in this New Year: and may she obtain for us and for the whole world the gift of peace. Amen!

The reviews are coming in fast and furious; some predictably stating that the Pope's New Year's address "left many scratching their heads"... while others approvingly quoted his words and nodded in agreement.

~*~

In other news: Carolina kicked Michigan's ass! (You shoulda heard the whooping and hollering in the Mellow Mushroom today.) And Georgia beat Nebraska, which was welcome news in my household.

It's going to be an interesting year. :)

Cee Lo Green Changes ‘Imagine’ Lyrics during New Years Eve show

... and in doing so, has pissed off everybody.

From Yahoo News:

R&B singer Cee Lo Green prompted a rush of anger for his New Year‘s Eve performance of John Lennon’s “Imagine” in which he swapped the lyrics “no religion too” to “all religions true.”

Green performed the famous ballad shortly before the ball dropped in New York’s Times Square. It was broadcast during NBC‘s New Year’s Eve special and CNN carried a portion of it as well.

The full line Green changed was: “Nothing to kill or die for, And all religions true,” prompting a flurry of angry reactions from atheists and Lennon fans alike on Twitter.

According to the Huffington Post, Green himself took to the site to defend his performance and responded to several profanity-laced messages. All of Green’s tweets were deleted from his account Sunday morning.

“Yo I meant no disrespect by changing the lyric guys! I was trying to say a world were u could believe what u wanted that’s all,” Green wrote in one now-deleted message.

That didn’t stopped the barrage of outraged tweets, many of which accused Green of committing “blasphemy” by altering Lennon’s song.

More about the incident:

Cee Lo Green changes lyrics to Lennon's Imagine to include pro-religion message enraging fans (UK-Daily Mail)

Fans angry that Cee Lo changed 'Imagine' lyrics (MSNBC)

Cee Lo Green Changes 'Imagine' Lyrics To 'All Religions' From John Lennon's 'No Religion' During New Year's Eve Show (Huffington Post)

Song lyrics are changed all the time and few people seem to care. I am startled (and pleased) that this lyrical-alteration has garnered so much attention.

And I hope everyone else had a Happy New Year!

Have a great New Year!

As promised on this morning's radio show, here are my 2011 obituaries:




Swami Bhaktipada

Kate Schulte

Betty Ford

Joe Bageant

Ben Masel

Jessica Nathanson (Plains Feminist)

Elizabeth Taylor

Owsley Stanley (Bear)

Anne Francis

Anthony Dellaventura (from 2010)

Requiescat in pace.

~*~


Blogging notice for the New Year:

Apparently, there is some sort of weird software that pops up on my comment page, but it doesn't manifest on all computers and phones. I am trying to figure this out, and sincerely hope to have it properly taken care of soon. (Blogger Help Forum is famously slack; the expression "you get what you pay for" comes to mind.) If you have any clue as to what this is and how I might get rid of the damnable thing (the pesky 'download manager' that pops up is called Ilivid, and yes, it certainly does make I livid), please help! I have already executed the recommended steps to uninstall on MY end, but here's the confusing thing: It isn't on MY computer. (?) I keep thinking it must be embedded in the Blogger html code itself, but I have no idea how it got there. And I can't figure out why this pop-up doesn't show up for me too?

(sobs)

I have been fiddling and futzing with this crap for hours now, whilst keeping one eye on my LAW AND ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT New Year's Eve marathon. Otherwise, the whole afternoon would have been an entire waste.

~*~

I now present DEAD AIR'S OFFICIAL VIDEO OF THE YEAR! (appropriate hoots and hollers)

As always, my criteria is: which video did I listen to the most, after I initially posted it?

No contest.

Southern Culture on the Skids - White Trash/Greenback Fly



Have a Happy New Year, everybody!

Onward and Upward

At left: Occupy Greenville has kept our plucky heroine from dissolving into hopelessness during her long period of unemployment this year: THREE CHEERS FOR THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT, which has restored many folks' faith in America.

~*~

I used to wonder why people (usually women) deleted their blogs. No longer. I get it now.

As net-denizens Google various religious-and-Christmas-oriented-posts I have written over the past four-and-a-half years, I feel theologically and emotionally bereft. I was so certain, and now I am not.

Or rather, I am certain that uncertainty is the state of humanity. I no longer unequivocally declare that particular existential points of dogma are true, except to say, this is what I feel right now. This is what I believe is true right now.

And this is, in fact, what we are always saying, we just don't seem to realize that our personal truths collide over time. We re-arrange the biography to make our wildly different, disparate truths make sense. But they simply don't.

This is because we are not the same people we were.

The person that started this blog is me, yet it is another me, a past-me. I do not agree with everything the past-me wrote, in fact, I wince at a good deal of it. I can understand why people feel the need to delete that which makes them embarrassed and makes them wince. And women, specifically, can find this nearly intolerable. On the above-linked thread, Feminist Avatar wrote:

I almost deleted my blog as I was fed up with discussions going on in my online community, which I disagreed with and felt had been done so many times before, with no resolution. And, my gut response was- get out of here- and I think I saw leaving my blog up as leaving a part of myself 'there'; in that conversation, even tho' I wasn't and hadn't posted in ages.

A wiser person than me once said that women were more reluctant to 'let go of the authorial signature' than men (that is to stop owning their words- seeing cultural products as a creation of society and context rather than individuals), because they had only recently won the right to own them in the first place (ie women's right to a public voice is historically new and hard won). Perhaps, as a result, when we need to walk away from particular online communities or just the internet as a time suck, we feel we can't leave something of ourselves there- we can't stop owning our words (even if they may be out of date or not where we are any more). And perhaps, because of that sense of ownership, if we move beyond those ideas or no longer agree with them, we also can't leave them out there, as it is no longer us.

Yes, I understand that, as well as the Buddhist concept of impermanence.

~*~

I nearly titled this post "Can Ron Paul win the Iowa primary?" and then thought the better of it. Nah. But I am once again voting strategically for the good doctor, as I did in the last South Carolina Republican primary four years ago.

I heartily recommend Conor Friedersdorf's piece in The Atlantic, titled Grappling With Ron Paul's Racist Newsletters--currently up to a whopping 633 comments. The money quotes:

Do I think that Paul wrote the offending newsletters? I do not. Their style and racially bigoted philosophy is so starkly different from anything he has publicly espoused during his long career in public life -- and he is so forthright and uncensored in his pronouncements, even when they depart from mainstream or politically correct opinion -- that I'd wager substantially against his authorship if Las Vegas took such bets. Did I mention how bad some of the newsletters are? It's a level of bigotry that would be exceptionally difficult for a longtime public figure to hide.

For that reason, I cannot agree with [The Weekly Standard's Jamie] Kirchick when he concludes that "Ron Paul is not the plain-speaking antiwar activist his supporters believe they are backing -- but rather a member in good standing of some of the oldest and ugliest traditions in American politics."

On the other hand, it doesn't seem credible that Paul was unaware of who wrote the execrable newsletters, and although almost a million dollars per year in revenue is a substantial incentive to look away from despicable content, having done so was at minimum an act of gross negligence and at worst an act of deep corruption. Indeed, Paul himself has acknowledged that he "bears moral responsibility" for the content.

Given its odiousness that is no small thing.

For the record, I certainly agree. I also agree with this quote--although regular readers might recall that as a true believer, I defended both Jeremiah Wright AND Bill Ayers:

For me, the disconnect between the Ron Paul newsletters, which make me sick, and Paul's words and actions in public life, which I often admire, put me in mind of the way I reacted when candidate Barack Obama was found to associate with Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers, both of whom had said execrable things. I couldn't defend any of it. But I could never get exercised about the association in exactly the way that writers like Victor Davis Hanson wanted, because it seemed totally implausible that if Obama was elected he would turn out to secretly share the convictions of the Weather Underground, or hope for God to damn America. It always seemed to me that those relationships were the unsavory product of personal ambition. I don't mean to suggest that the two circumstances are entirely analogous, but I do find it hard to believe that if Paul were elected, he'd turn out to be a secret racist, implement policies that targeted minorities, or drum up support by giving speeches with hateful rhetoric.

And then, he makes the points I wish I had been smart enough to make, says the things I wish I had been smart enough to write. YES!:

[Congressman Ron Paul] has a long history of doing what he says when elected, and no more.

"How could you vote for someone who..."

Isn't that a thorny formulation? I'm sometimes drawn to it. And yet. We're all choosing among a deeply compromised pool of candidates, at least when the field is narrowed to folks who poll above 5 percent. Put it this way. How can you vote for someone who wages an undeclared drone war that kills scores of Pakistani children? Or someone who righteously insisted that indefinite detention is an illegitimate transgression against our civilizational values, and proceeded to support that very practice once he was elected? How can you vote for someone who has claimed to be deeply convicted about abortion on both sides of the issue, constantly misrepresents his record, and demagogues important matters of foreign policy at every opportunity? Or someone who suggests a religious minority group should be discriminated against? Or who insists that even given the benefit of hindsight, the Iraq War was a just and prudent one?

And yet many of you, Republicans and Democrats, will do just that -- just as you and I have voted for a long line of past presidents who've deliberately pursued policies of questionable-at-best morality.

In voting for "the lesser of two evils," there is still evil there -- we're just better at ignoring certain kinds in this fallen world. A national security policy that results in the regular deaths of innocent foreigners in order to maybe make us marginally safer from terrorism is one evil we are very good at ignoring.

Prison rape is an evil we're even better at ignoring.

It is a wonderful thing that Americans are usually unable to ignore the evil of outright racism. It hasn't always been so. The change is a triumph. But important as rhetorical issues of race and ethnicity are in America, we're by necessity choosing the lesser of two -- or three or seven -- evils when we pick a candidate. And so it's worth complicating the moral picture with some questions we don't normally consider when we talk about race.

For example: What American policy most hurts people who'd be a minority group in this country? I'd say cluster bombs, missiles and bullets that inadvertently kill them while we try to kill terrorists or convert tribal or sectarian societies into democracies. Or perhaps an even graver harm is done by the subsidies we give to agribusinesses, destroying Third World agricultural markets and opportunity. To think of the damage done over the decades by sugar dumping in Haiti alone! And isn't it uncomfortable to think about how race and nationality is implicated in the priority we assign to folks who suffer from the aforementioned policies? The policies aren't rooted in personal racism, like the lines in racist tracts -- sugar dumping is rooted in an amoral agricultural lobby that wants to enrich itself -- yet it's hard to imagine such policies would persist as uncontroversially if "people like us" were the victims.

In the U.S., the War on Drugs arguably does the most grave damage to poor communities, especially in black and Latino neighborhoods, where the majority of arrests take place, though whites use drugs more often. The greatest threat to an ethnic minority in the United States isn't that doctrinaire libertarians are going to reverse the Civil Rights Act -- it's that Muslim Americans or immigrants are going to be held without trial in the aftermath of a future terrorist attack because we've allowed our and their civil liberties to erode.

Were it 1964, I'd never vote for Paul, precisely because my desire to protect and expand liberty would've placed the highest priority on the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Paul once said in a speech that "the forced integration dictated by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 increased racial tensions while diminishing individual liberty," despite the fact that it clearly enhanced the individual liberty of blacks, the group the state was most implicated in transgressing against.

But it is not 1964. Other injustices better define our times. In 2012, when accused terrorists are held indefinitely without charges or trial, and folks accused of drug possession have their doors broken down by flash-grenade wielding SWAT teams in no-knock raids, Paul would arguably protect the rights of racial, religious or ethnic minority groups better than Obama, regardless of whether Paul is now or ever was a racist, and irrespective of the fact that Obama, as the first black president, has in some ways transformed Americans' thinking on race. (LBJ, who signed the Civil Rights Act, was not know for his personal progressivism on race or women's rights, but he nonetheless backed policies that had powerful consequences for women and minorities).

What I want Paul detractors to confront is that he alone, among viable candidates, favors reforming certain atrocious policies, including policies that explicitly target ethnic and religious minorities. And that, appalling as it is, every candidate in 2012 who has polled above 10 percent is complicit in some heinous policy or action or association. Paul's association with racist newsletters is a serious moral failing, and even so, it doesn't save us from making a fraught moral judgment about whether or not to support his candidacy, even if we're judging by the single metric of protecting racial or ethnic minority groups, because when it comes to America's most racist or racially fraught policies, Paul is arguably on the right side of all of them.

Read it all, and at least a few of the hundreds of brawling comments, well worth your while if you care about the Republican primary and the next election.

~*~

Check out our show tomorrow, where we will be doing a year-end round-up. In upstate South Carolina, join us at 9am on WFIS radio, 1600 AM and/or 94.9 FM on your radio dial. We have online streaming, so drop by.

And winding up with some holiday tackiness/nostalgia. At left: The Great Southern Shopping Center in Columbus, Ohio, my hometown. As you can see by the cars, this photo was probably taken some time in the early-to-mid 60s, and certainly, my fondest Christmas-shopping memories come from this period. (This shopping center was only a short distance from one of my very favorite and beloved Drive-In movie theatres, which I know I have rhapsodized about here before.)

The shopping center featured the SEVEN WONDERS OF THE WORLD in miniature, and we used to walk around them as kids, taking photos and gawking as if they were real. Surely, this was as close as most of us were ever going to get. My absolute favorite was the Taj Mahal, which apparently even had real water for awhile, but mostly I remember dried-up water with dirt and leaves in it. Unfortunately, my dogged net-searches could NOT bring up the Taj Mahal or Eiffel Tower, presented right alongside Woolworth's and hardware stores and everything else. At Christmas time, the tacky Christmas lights and faux-evergreens were draped around the SEVEN WONDERS OF THE WORLD, and we thought it was the greatest thing we had ever seen.

Confession: I still think it was, but I have since learned how uncool it is to say so.

Thanks to Otherstream for the photo of little-Pisa, which brought back a nice Christmas memory.

PS: And if you have never read Truman Capote's amazingly wonderful A CHRISTMAS MEMORY, you should. Too wonderful for words, but get out those kleenex.

The Real Daisy

... was my grandmother. I have no idea when or where this photo was taken, but it was probably in Pittsburgh.

Her eyes were so black, you couldn't even see the pupils. Her hair was likewise very black, naturally curly and silky.

My grandmother was Melungeon, which I have always intended to blog about, but there is so little known about them, I don't know exactly what to write. Suffice to say, they were very WEIRD backwoods people with all kinds of BIZARRE traditions you never heard of. (I later understood this is why my family was so odd and never fit in with the other nice, Midwestern families on the block.) Her youngest brother (who never left the backwoods) had an indescribable, hard-to-place accent that was nearly indecipherable, as did both of her parents. It went beyond mere Appalachian accents, and it was nice to finally learn the reason why.

When the Melungeons were asked questions by census takers, they told them all kinds of creative stories, claiming to be Portuguese, Arabs, Jews, and whatever else they thought the census-taker wanted to hear. That's why nobody knew for sure what race/ethnicity they were, and historians are still arguing over it. Much has finally been sorted out through DNA: Melungeons were "tri-racial isolates" -- Native American indigenous people (and refugees from colonial encroachment) and free African-Americans, intermarried with white colonists who decided to go off and live in the wilderness for whatever reasons. This accounts for their deep secrecy and suspicion of strangers (and especially the government).

When white colonists eventually migrated to the Cumberland Gap and the New River (where my grandmother was born), they found these strange folks already living there.

I am interested in learning more, as it becomes known. In studying the Melungeons, it is fascinating to note how some people don't mind being one of the first Americans, but twist themselves in knots to deny the African ancestors. My grandmother told me that as a child, she always knew there were Africans in her family tree... but that is not the rude terminology she used, which I will not repeat here. (What is interesting is that she found this amusing and never denied it. In all honesty, she seemed to find the idea of being related to Cherokee more disturbing.) When people snootily remarked that she looked like Lena Horne, she was obviously too thrilled to get mad about the racial thing.

Second photo is of my grandmother and my mother, Betty, on the right. I estimate their ages to be 37 and 21, respectively. (1955 - Parkersburg, WV)

















Third photo is my mother and me, ages 38 and 15. (1973 - Columbus, OH)
Yes, before you ask, I think that IS real fur. She thought fake fur was low class.

I miss them a lot during this time of year.

And now, your turn. Who do you miss?

Occupy the Christmas parade!

We showed up last night at the Christmas Parade in Greenville, with 99% Santa. In his regular incarnation, he is a regular caller to my radio show. (PS: Check us out from yesterday!)


He told us he made a list, checked it twice, and he knew exactly who had been naughty (Goldman Sachs, Bank of America) and nice (us!).

He also instructed us to Occupy!--and none of us would ever dare to disobey Santa.

Hope you like my other sparkly pictures of Christmas partiers and revelers, below. As always, you can click to enlarge.

~*~

Happy Thanksgiving!

LEAVE THE TURKEY ALONE! He/she is innocent and didn't do anything to YOU!

Below, behold my popular, yearly Thanksgiving cartoon. (I started getting hits on it on SUNDAY!) Have a great holiday!

Why I hate Newt: It's personal

At left: January 2000 cover of Atlanta Magazine, courtesy of Rebecca Burns and her great memory.




Going to suburban Atlanta for the holiday, later in the week. Now that Newtie is back in the news, I will be hearing all about him from my father-in-law (again), who considers him the most dishonest of the most dishonest politicians. I remember the 90s as one long anti-Newt screed, over various Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. It was a nice vacation for my nerves when Newt retired from government to take $1.5 million from Freddie Mac, leaving the good citizens of Georgia alone. (Although lots of 90s survivors have never trusted him, for a variety of reasons.)

And now he's back and noisily running for President, with his famous cost-cutting measures, such as staying in the SC Governor's mansion on my dime. And he instructs us dirty Occupiers to take a bath and get a job! This has brought out some nasty tweets in response:

You know #Newt, some in #OWS may not bathe as often as you, but I'd bet most of them wouldn't divorce their spouses who are dying of cancer.

Direct hit!

Yes, its hard to swallow self-righteous moralism from serial monogamists who owe Tiffany's a half million dollars, and expect to be taken seriously. But there are Newt signs all over my neighborhood and across from St Mary Magdalene in Simpsonville, so I guess he is making important political inroads in the Palmetto State.

He is an awful, resentful, arrogant, duplicitous, dishonest man. And not just in his personal life, but in every single thing he does and every single thing he touches.

This tells us so much about the Republican Party, that this common shyster is what they are left with.

And besides that, he is going to ruin ANOTHER Thanksgiving for me as I listen to a catalog of his sins. Dyspepsia awaits, and plenty of it.

(burp)

Happy Halloween!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN YALL!

Hope you enjoy my favorite Halloween songs:

Human Fly - The Cramps



~*~

I wrote about the following song in more detail here.

Where Evil Grows - The Poppy Family



~*~

And I first shared this one last Halloween... I still love it!

Journey to The Unknown (TV series opening)



~*~

Links to my previous Halloween posts:

Halloween Horror movie thread! Don't go to sleep! (2007) -- Comment thread includes people's favorite horror movies.

Halloween horror movie thread II (2008) -- Several great old horror movie trailers.

Happy Halloween! (2009) -- Dogs For Autism benefit, including a Doggie Costume Party.

Happy Halloween! (2010) -- I shared the above TV-theme, and in the comments I talked about an old trip to a local fundamentalist "Judgment House"--and several people thought I should have made a whole post out of it.

Hope your frightful holiday is good!

Deadheading

When the blue meanies in Blogdonia get nasty with me, they make fun of my official Blogdonia name. :(

Airhead, Deadbrain, etc. "Your name is perfect!" they like to sneer at me. *sigh*

And so, my first short post for the new year (getting in shape for my new blog-habits, shorter posts! more often!) will be to EXPLAIN "Deadhead" (noun) and "Deadheading" (verb).

Deadhead (noun): Fan of the Grateful Dead. (whom I hope need no introduction!)

Deadheading (aviation):

term used for a return flight made by a commercial aircraft without any cargo or paying passengers on board.

By extension, a member of an airline's flight staff carried free of charge but not working is known as a deadhead. This most often happens when airline crew are located in the wrong place and need to travel to take up their duties. This is also known as 'positioning.'

Deadheading (gardening):

refers to the removal of dead or spent flowers either to encourage more flowering or to improve the general appearance of the plant. Most annuals and many perennials will continue to bloom throughout the growing season if deadheaded. Rudbeckia and Echinacea are good examples of perennials that benefit from deadheading.

Deadheading (railroads):

when a crew is transported from one terminal to another, or needs to be transported to pick up a train. When deadheading they may travel by train or auto.

It also refers to the empty, non-revenue-generating movement of a passenger train to a station or yard as required by the schedule. These moves are usually performed to position the equipment and crews for an ensuing, scheduled revenue (passenger-carrying) run.

I like all those definitions!

Admittedly, the floral reference is especially appropriate for me right now; we need to prune the tops of flowers to make the overall plant stronger. Indeed, we certainly do! The roots also benefit from generous deadheading. And what a coincidence, that I am in the process of doing this in my own life.

The name is still accurate and always will be.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Merry Christmas from the Family

I've been so profoundly exhausted from another holiday retail season, I almost neglected the fourth year in a row of our Dead Air holiday tradition. I hereby present Robert Earl Keen's MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM THE FAMILY!

As always, non-rednecks and/or yankees are certainly free to sit this one out.

Have a great Christmas everyone! Feliz Navidad!

~*~

Merry Christmas from the Family - Robert Earl Keen

Father Christmas, Give us some Money!

...The Kinks. Dead Air official Christmas Carol for the fourth year in a row! :D

Retail Christmas Muzik: Merry Christmas, Everybody!

At left: Is it--? Yes it IS! It's Phil Spector as Santa Claus! Take cover!


NOTE: This is one of my favorite posts, although my blog was largely unread when I wrote it back in December of 2007, so I am rerunning it here. A very harried Christmas in retail gives me precious little time to write, so I am dipping into the Greatest Hits.

It was originally titled "You'll be doing all right, with your Christmas of white." The Slade video was yanked eons ago, so I had to hunt down another one.

Enjoy!--DD

~*~

If one is fully experiencing what a former co-worker of mine at the Open Book used to call The Zen of Retail, then one is able to detach from one's immediate surroundings and carefully observe the psychology of both Christmas and capitalism. Careful analysis of the music, which reflects the selected ambience, the projected market or target of the music, the veritable soundtrack of the season, if you will... ah, here is true yuletide wisdom!

I try to remember these wise words, every year.

As a retail wage-slave, I have been listening to lots and lots of Christmas music, against my will. Some of it barely qualifies as holiday music, unless you consider "Shake your ass for Christmas" or "Spank me for Christmas," part of your Advent repertoire, and certainly, some folks do. It's either that or a buncha damn kiddie songs, Holly Jolly Christmas, and so on. Bah, humbug! (You're a mean one, Mr Grinch.)

Sometimes, if you're lucky, you get the transcendent Charlie Brown Christmas music. Spookier this year than last year, is Frosty the Snowman, as delivered by Ronnie Spector and the Ronettes, since you know her creepy, homicidal ex-husband (see above) was standing nearby and forbidding her to leave his sight. (*Source: He's a Rebel) Maybe they should play that song at Halloween instead?

On the EZ-smooth muzak station, we hear Frank Sinatra sing his sweet version of "Oh by gosh by golly, it's time for Mistletoe and Holly"--just as smooth and nice as gravy on rice. Then we hear him later in his Vegas period: "Just! Hear! Thoooo-oooose! Sleigh Bells ringling! Jing-jing-jingling too! Jack!" and it's interesting to think about his progression from the young Sinatra to the old Sinatra... but that is way beyond the scope of this blog, or even Christmas itself.




Madonna's "Santa Baby" was xeroxed (that is to say, stolen) from the far-superior original by Eartha Kitt, but I'm sure she's cagey enough to call it a "homage" instead.

Elvis is credited with starting the pop Christmas music trend, but please, you should not BLAME him, just as he can't be held accountable for any bad rock music that followed. Elvis recorded a whole Christmas album at a time (1957) when only mainstream singers (which meant: no rock or pop) like Frank Sinatra, did. Many believed Elvis cut the record only to garner respectability, since it indeed DID bring him major respectability. Even mainstream people who disliked rock and roll bought the Christmas record, which was a sensation containing the huge hit ballad Blue Christmas. I've never believed that he did it only for respectability, but also to stake a claim that he was as good as the Frank Sinatras of the world. As for the Christian-respectability angle, it was something Elvis fell back on his whole life, making gospel records right alongside the others. (I know this because my grandmother owned them all.)

Dean Martin's "It's a Marshmallow World in the Winter" makes me think of Tony Soprano driving that poor guy out of his lakefront house by broadcasting Dean Martin 24/7 at deafening levels, from a boat on the lake. Imagine waking up to DEAN MARTIN serenading you, huh? Yes, I'd have to move, too.

I already played my Kinks Christmas song for you, and now here is my ABSOLUTE favorite Christmas pop song by glam-rock band Slade, which I defy you not to love as much as I do. Lots of Americans have never heard of Slade, believe it or not:

Slade were one of the most recognisable acts of the glam rock movement and were, at their peak, the most commercially popular band in the UK. They are well known for the deliberate misspelling of their song titles and for the song Merry Xmas Everybody (released December 1973), now one of the most iconic Christmas pop songs in the United Kingdom.

(from Foxytunes)

Turn it up!

~*~

Merry Christmas, Everybody - Slade



Look to the future now, it's only just begun.

Have a cruelty-free Thanksgiving!

Have a great Thanksgiving everyone... and as I do every year, I hereby counsel you all to LEAVE THE INNOCENT TURKEY ALONE! He or she did not do anything to you!

(I guess the new cool thing is actually going out and killing your own turkey, like you are on Survivor or something?)

See you all in a couple of days... eat lots of mashed potatoes! :)