about time

As someone who has had police lie on accident reports and citations for conflict between bikes and cars where there has been personal injury all I can say is ABOUT TIME.

I have NEVER understood what motivates police officers who lie in police reports but I have always assumed it has been a sense of impunity. In some situations this proves to be false, and thanks be praised for that.

Having been caught on the bad side of such a scenario, it gives little hope that sometimes, if you're lucky, you can escape being wrongfully prosecuted. What should happen almost never does - in only the rarest of situations do lower level courts ever consider punishment of the criminal act of police lying on court documents. This seems to me to be a huge hole in our justice system. Police are protected by their unions, but the union/department interaction is not and should not be considered a proxy for actual justice.

A police officer being put on desk duty makes sense when there's evidence of wrongdoing and unnecessary violence in an arrest, but where is the court's fealty to justice and the rule of law? without truthfulness in record there is no opportunity for the rule of law.

bill melendez RIP

another great voice, this one distorted on tape. bill melendez, aka the voice of snoopy - and obviously so much more.

look! a car filled with baloons!

So I've seen a lot over the course of my life, but this was, well, a first:

a yellow volkswagon bug filled with people dressed in yellow with yellow birds flying around inside the car.

damn.

don lafontaine

RIP

it's hard to not immediately recognize the voice.

sometimes you find someone after they're gone

so, for me, it's always sad to realize that not reading liner notes closely or getting to see some bands means you only find out about them from their Obit.

pitchfork points out that adam nodalman died recently.


I don't know his last band, though sunburned hand of the man is an awesome name.

it turns out though, that i've been listening to bands he's made for a good long time - from missing foundation days on through borbatomagus and crash worship.

Obama's DNC speech

In an email thread, someone raised the issue of the propaganda-like elements of the DNC production, specifically quoting "a friend in the Canadian military" who referenced Leni Reifenstahl's Triumph of Will. People were offended by this comparison.

This is what I wrote in response:

Against my better judgment I watched this speech (I will confess fatigue set in for me months ago in this electoral process). I did so because for years I have been interested in political speeches from the perspective of craft (speech writing was once part of my job). The speech was a great one both as it exists in time (relative to the audience expectations) and as a composition generally. It was also very well delivered (even his stumbles over teleprompter lines seemed perfectly delivered from a prosodic perspective, which is very, very hard to pull off).

What I could not stop thinking about is what is the relationship between CNN's feed (which is what I was watching because it was on in the house when I got home) and the DNC production feed? The whole of the speech and its presentation were powerfully delivered and orchestrated in Denver, and it appeared that way in my living room in California. How did it vary between the two locations and how did that variance get decided? I know I saw a lot of CNN branding during the time I was watching too (at this point I can't remember when I noticed this, but it was several times and probably before or after the speech). I also noticed stadium branding and adverts burned into the screens of the jumbotrons, which, while off topic, was kind of funny to me (at one point I thought "is United the official airline of the DNC or something?" before I realized it was just a screen artifact).

Frankly, the questions that kept popping into my head about the feed and CNN's coverage at times overpowered even the incredible speech. Yes, I was moved in my living room (it does not help that I watched everything 10 feet wide), but I certainly feel manipulated by being moved. Who was I manipulated by, on what level, and for what purposes, well, those are good questions. Broadcasters and politicians have a kind of creepy relationship to each other and politics is politics.

As for comparisons to Riefenstahl, come on - someone put this together. Even outside of the context of the words, which were not, I gather, scripted by the show's producer(s) or director(s), it's a creative work on multiple levels; even the selection of the venue and the choice of podium (both of which I thought a lot about) are debated over for the contribution to message. It's foolish to think otherwise and it's foolish to criticize comparing it to similar works. But just as the stadium was chosen over another venue for particular purposes, the subject of comparison (Triumph of Will) was chosen for particular purposes. Zingers are hard to understand outside of the context in which they were delivered, and this one can surely cut multiple ways (we are talking about art and politics here folks). I have no idea of the intent of the original deliverer ("Canadian" and "military" do pre-load a set of assumptions which may or may not be accurate) but if the goal was not to offend, I personally would have found a different point of comparison. If the point was to raise concerns over the balance of "news" and the political goals of individuals, parties, and nations and the potential for horrific outcomes, well, the zinger is probably not the best delivery mechanism for such a subtle point. But I also concede the context of a political speech at a political rally where "fitness of being commander in chief" is a campaign issue makes it seem reasonable to think Riefenstahl before one thinks Zhang Yimou, even though both may be appropriate.

respect due

straight up



i saw this as a work in progress (searching for the minutemen on the youtube and finding sickles and hammers), without knowing that's what it was. subsequently I discovered husker du's something i learned today. and was like "hmmmm......."

a song for every day of the year. danced out. pretty good taste in music too comma dammit.

from the black sabbath to the sister nancy to thee headcoatees to the france gall who has been in heavy rotation for me lately. but why stop there? the jam, the television, j dilla, the misfits with a bird in the foreground. why stop there? well, because there are 366 pretty damned good songs, to say nothing about some good dancin'

a little moonlight and some clouds

Anyone that fails to recognize how incredible a composer debussy was is pretty totally pathetic.

the clair de lune:



seriously, this piece contains so much of what I love in composition.

the clouds?

pop up video advert from youtube the first time I viewed this. guess they have to make some money at it somehow, but really - an ecko commercial over debussy? can't you do better than that?

okay, let me rephrase that: youtube: fucking retarded. an advert that covers what you are trying to look at and cannot be closed makes your service useless. good job. I'll be sure to use another service that allows me to actually see things. If I wanted to watch advertising I would prefer it to be like television where you can actually see content not covered by adverts. it says a lot for me to say television is better than what you've got here.

note to google: please figure out which asshole MBA you hired to come up with this idea and fire them.

congratulations

i think congratulations are definitely in order to the entire olympic community after china sentenced two women in their late 70s to a year of forced labour for seeking permits to protest the prices they received for their homes being destroyed for the olympics.

I want to be sure each and every one understands exactly what just happened so when you enjoy watching 16 year old girls jump up and down in tight outfits better than other 16 year old girls, you understand what you're paying for.

two women in their late 70s asked for permission to protest in a designated protest area because their houses were destroyed for the olympics and they did not receive what they thought was fair compensation for their houses. they were denied permission to protest. they came back another day to seek permission to protest. their request was denied. they came back another day seeking permission to protest. they were denied. on the 5th day they were informed that they had been sentenced to 1 year of forced labor for asking for permission to protest over the previous days.

so, global community, let's just get this straight - in your greed to exploit china's lax environmental policies and incredibly cheap labor pool as well as trade a little quid for a little quo on getting support for Chicago hosting the olympics in the future you decided a country that forces septuagenarians into forced labor for seeking permission to complain about their government.

well that certainly epitomizes the spirit of the olympics.

for me this event more than any other (and there have been many) clinches the end of my tolerance of the olympics in any form.