Rob S & Rusty @ Croton Dam (Taken with Instagram at Muskegon River)
Celloloop
Things I made.
By Rusty.
Just look at 1995-era Republican house conference. It’s so crusty, sweaty, smelly, ugly, yellowed fat white men. So pre-digital. We can do SO MUCH BETTER THAN THIS for how we decide public affairs in this country. We need to start over wholesale. Constitutional convention. So much of this bullshit can be discarded. We’re in a digital world now but our institutions are so calcified in dead dead dead ways of doing things.
Chris Farley impersonating Newt Gingrich (by guyjohn59)
Cultural rot from “Rival Sons”
I mean, it’s a little frustrating that these fellows have the cojones to write, record & release a song like this. It’s so copycat that it’s not even enjoyable. How do they have fun even making this music? It’s more frustrating that they have a recording contract and major label support while honest musicians such as ourselves try to come up with original concepts. Pshaw to this. We could rip off half of Out On The Tiles any day, too. We’re smart and honest enough not to.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-MA0m1K2jW4
This is symptomatic of the same cultural rot that produces the endless string of sequels to superhero movies. Note how “metal” and “hip-hop” cultures have stagnated for 20 years now. When teenagers today make the same style choices as they did in 1995, you know we’re all out of ideas… there were distinct eras of pop culture, once upon a time. Pop music in 1970 didn’t sound like pop music in 1950. Pop music today sounds exactly like it did in 1991. This is the fall of the empire.
A few thoughts about the Occupy movement, by Rusty
A message to friends & family who deride and mock the Occupy [insert city name here] protesters as “hippies”, “communes”, socialists, people bent on destroying capitalism, et cetera:
Citizens are peacefully assembling to discuss the public interest, specifically:
1. vast and growing income inequality has produced a concentration of wealth in the top TENTH of one percent. (Yes, they should call themselves the 99.9%ers.)
2. that concentration of wealth has led to a concentration of political power and influence,
3. the extremely wealthy and politically dominant class hides behind a claim of “but we support free markets and personal responsibility”.
So, if you mock the Occupy protesters, please confirm for us that you unreservedly support:
1. vast inequality of privilege and opportunity
2. a corrupt, elections-driven, revolving-door political and lobbying system
3. the continued growth of pure finance as a sector of the economy, not the kind that raises capital for productive ends (like manufacturing or energy) but the speculative, hedged, swapped, private, unregulated, and secretly priced deals for which taxpayers to the US Treasury are ultimately on the hook, as a result of BOTH REPUBLICAN AND DEMOCRATIC EXECUTIVE AND LEGISLATIVE BRANCHES.
In other words, if you’re for a continuation of a broken political and banking system, then you can take a stand against the Occupy protesters, call them names, whatever. Go ahead, keep that current system going. It’s working out splendidly for you. [Other than that whole matter of how we’re broke and drowning in debt as a country with crumbling infrastructure; and those pesky hippies you hate & would like to see tear-gassed, playing their drums outside your office buildings.]
However, it would be nice if you would explain how continuing to support:
1. a completely broken legislative branch (at both federal and state levels)
2. a continuous election/publicity cycle (allowing no one in office any time to actually govern & get things done)
3. a bewildering lack of transparency (absurd in the internet era) in matters of the public trust/good/works/elections
…is going to solve our problems?
Thanks!
Oh, in case you want my suggestions:
1. reinstate Glass-Steagall
2. tax all securities trades at 0.01% PER TRANSACTION to discourage high-frequency algorithmic trading, which has turned financial markets into a computerized casino that flashes money around the globe with few tangible benefits to society (unlike, say, raising capital to finance productive economic activities)
3. overturn Citizens United (or else let every rich kid who passes out candy bars and phone cards to win student council elections, continue to do so all the way on up the ladder)
4. roll back taxes to Reagan’s 1986 reform levels (if you “conservatives” all idolize and worship Reagan so much, you should be able to support his agenda in practice)
5. constitutional convention with one male and one female delegate per district, nominated by letters from at least 30 other voters, then chosen at random from that pool. Let’s figure out how to revise our great original plan for a people’s government to incorporate some new realities our Founding Fathers couldn’t have considered:
- we can communicate by video person-to-person instantly (news doesn’t take a month to get from Philadelphia to London)
- an AK-47 is a swap meet item (not exactly the family black powder musket)
- a commander-in-chief can order an assassination of his enemy and watch live video from a robotic plane as it executes the mission (didn’t Congress have to authorize all foreign entanglements, once upon a time?)
“ These priorities are mutually reinforcing, and they are affordable. Providing modern family planning methods to all people with unmet needs would cost about $6.7 billion a year, slightly less than the $6.9 billion Americans are expected to spend for Halloween this year. By one estimate, achieving universal primary and secondary education by 2015 would cost anywhere from $35 billion to $70 billion in additional spending per year.
Seven Billion - NYTimes.com
Pharmacist Don Colcord Sustains Nucla, Colorado : The New Yorker
“Maybe I can describe it this way,” he says. “I like to play chess. I moved to a small town, and nobody played chess there, but one guy challenged me to checkers. I always thought it was kind of a simple game, but I accepted. And he beat me nine or ten games in a row. That’s sort of like living in a small town. It’s a simpler game, but it’s played to a higher level.”
Dana on Endless Wall Trail, New River Gorge, WV (Taken with instagram)
The Elusive Big Idea
We prefer knowing to thinking because knowing has more immediate value. It keeps us in the loop, keeps us connected to our friends and our cohort. Ideas are too airy, too impractical, too much work for too little reward.
