perfidy

Upon receiving the following informative missive from the Cuyahoga Board of Elections, I was initially excited by its cover. "Instructions for New Optical Scan Voting System Inside," it promised, and I thought, "The BOE is going to SCAN MY RETINAS to figure out who I'm voting for." Then I considered the fact that any such equipment was probably manufactured by Diebold, and that meant that my eyeballs could be hacked by anyone with an iPod, some jewelry wire, and an old dog-eared copy of Electric Company magazine, and I instantly felt dubious.

But no, alas, there will be no Sci-Fi-Channelesque machine that says "Access Granted" in a soothing feminine robot voice. Instead, we here in the rustbelt will be employing the skills we mastered in 1982 while taking the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. Evidence these instructions:

So, apparently, I am to fill in the circle? When I cast my vote for George Washington? Isn't he that dude who hangs out on the stoop down the street and asks me for loosies every time I walk by on the way to the bodega? Huh. I didn't even know he was running for office.

Until you become a parent, you simply can't imagine the compromises you make without a thought to accommodate the needs of your children. Quite apart from the poop factor (in which the pre-kid categories of “no poop” and “poop” are joined by new states of being like “just a little poop,” “no visible poop,” and “I don’t smell anything, let’s make dinner”), all parts of your life are subtly altered in ways you don’t even notice until something throws the changes into stark relief.

Take music, for example.

My kid turned one year old this week, which means it's been a pretty cool year. He’s already musical, capable of banging a drum in time for up to five beats in a row or strumming my guitar with his little fist if I make a chord for him. That's wonderful, but it also means that he cares what noise is on the stereo. Therefore, anything that isn't kid-approved has for now mostly passed from my life.

The Boy's favorite music is metal (Iron Maiden, Amon Amarth, Metallica), bossa nova, and bluegrass, which mean's I'm an incredibly lucky person with an incredibly hip youngster. But his favorite favorite music is one specific lullaby album that he needs to hear every night at bedtime, and often at naptime too. Given that bedtime can ramify without warning from a fixed moment in time into an exhausting four-hour campaign of sorties, clever feints, temporary détentes, and diplomatic appeals to reason (lost, by the way, on the infant mind) which only through Herculean effort grinds toward a denouement in which our little angel drifts away to dreamland, sometimes that damn CD gets played straight through five or six times.

The upshot is, no matter how much NPR and jaded indie-rock I can cram during the daylight hours, the last twelve months of my musical life have been owned by “Dancing with Bears” and “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”

Which is why the latest release from the New England-based Midriff label has been so welcome. The 2006 release by their flagship band, The Beatings, titled Holding On To Hand Grenades, was my favorite album of that year, and several other Midriff releases have come close to that very high standard. Since Midriff is essentially “the Beatings and their friends and collaborators,” the various projects, side projects, solo releases and guest appearances add up to something like a white, postcollege Wu Tang Clan. Protect ya neck, New England!

The latest Midriff release is called The End of the New Country, and is attributed to a duo calling themselves Get Help. Get Help is a collaboration between Beatings guitarist and vocalist Tony Skalicky and New York musician Mike Ingenthron, who began writing songs together as a break from writing ad jingles. If Midriff has a GZA, it seems to be Skalicky, who has a very clear idea of what he wants his music to sound like and sticks to the plan like a pro.

What this means on vinyl (or in bits or scattered photons) is that like many other Midriff releases, Get Help drenches well-written songs and strong melodies in layers of fuzzy guitar and feedback which gradually build and ebb between enormous climaxes and quiet moments, a sound that is definitely, undeniably, refreshingly adult - not at all for little kids, and not at all like jingles.

Ok. I will admit, even without a kid in the picture this kind of stuff is like catnip to me. I can’t deny it. Give me some reverb, some layers of distorted guitars, and a slightly downcast lyric and I’ll go for it like a sucker. But – and this is important – at the end of the day, the songs need to be good. Without a great song, pretty sounds are just pretty, and the bloom quickly comes off the rose. That’s the story of dozens, if not hundreds, of albums that have crossed my path in the last two decades, and you probably haven’t heard of any of them.

Luckily, at least half of the songs on The End of the New Country (due out October 14) are very good indeed, with Skalicky’s brittle baritone voice (which resembles a cross between Ian Thomas of Joy Division, British folk icon Richard Thompson, and Jimmy Buffett) and Ingenthron’s lighter voice cutting through the sumptuous bed of dissonance and soaring overtones that is one of the Midriff label’s trademark sounds. The musical DNA is Sonic Youth, Morphine and My Bloody Valentine, but Skalicky and Ingenthron manage to invoke the sounds of their influences without becoming a thin imitation of them. (Does the fact that all the comparisons I can draw with Get Help are a decade or more old say something about them, or about me?)

But I did say “half.” One weakness many musicians have in common is an attenuated ability to self-edit. Call me old fashioned, but it's usually a mistake to assume that just because a CD can hold 74 minutes of music, it therefore should. That’s so wrong. An album takes as long as it takes -- and that time is generally under twelve songs and 45 minutes. Ask the Ramones; given half an hour, six microphones, and four chords you can make an all-time classic.

In the case of The End of the New Country, the album opens and closes extremely well, but the sheer number of songs on the record (fifteen), and a tendency toward sedate tempos and plush guitars means that the middle sags somewhat and some gems get buried. "Traveler's Shave Kit," which opens the record, and "Growing Circles" which closes it, are good enough to amount to statements of purpose. However, apart from the excellent title song I find myself hard pressed to identify standout songs when playing the record straight through.

Take for example “The Town Fires,” which is the twelfth song on the album. It’s a quiet and understated song that in the context of the album fails to stand out. But when it emerges in a random playlist it turns out to be a very welcome, winsome, and lovely three minutes of music. I guess too much of a good thing amounts to too much of a good thing.

The End of the New Country is a jumbled and slightly messy project with stretches of real beauty, strong melodies and sumptuous production. But on the songs that aren't standouts, the production is merely soothing rather than dramatic. This record is worth buying, ripping, and then making your own ten-song version out of the raw materials presented. Most importantly for me, this album does include at least ten very good songs that provide an alluring and mature break from lullabys and "The Itsy Bitsy Spider."

Previously published on Blogcritics

Let's just pretend it hasn't been a year since I last posted.

So anyway, I've gone buck-nutty this summer making up salads, some of which are even delicious. Here are two.

Carrot and red cabbage slaw with toasted fennel

1 small head red cabbage, cut into eights and finely shredded
4-5 medium carrots, grated
1 tablespoon fennel seeds
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/2 cup white balsamic or white wine vinegar
1/2 tsp grated ginger
1 tablespoon honey
salt
black pepper

Heat a small skillet over medium heat. Place the fennel seeds in the skillet and toss over low heat until they darken slightly and you can smell them.

Remove immediately to a spice grinder and pulverize.

In a small bowl, combine the vinegar, oil, fennel, ginger, honey, salt and pepper. Whisk vigorously to combine and let stand for 10-15 minutes.

In a large bowl, pour the dressing over the carrots and cabbage and toss well. Refrigerate for several hours or overnight. This salad is DOPE, yo, and excellent with pork or steaky-type fish.

Variation 1 - carrot and fennel slaw with orange dressing

Grated carrots
Finely shaved fennel bulb
Dry-toasted fennel seeds
Orange juice
Vegetable oil
White balsamic vinegar or white wine vinegar
Golden raisins
salt
and maybe a splash of Grand Mariner or Cointreau

Yesterday, Mrs. Buckethead and I went into town to register to vote.  And, as is the case whenever we both leave the house, our passel of youngins came with us.  My oldest, Sir John-my-cup-runneth-over-with-questions, wanted to know what was up.

John: What are we doing?

Me: Registering to vote.

John: Why are registering to vote? 

Me: So we can vote.

John: Can I vote?

Me: No.

John: Why can't I vote.

Me: Because I said so.

[wife hits me in arm]

Me: And because you're not old enough.

John: So you and mommie will vote?

Me: Yes.

John: What is voting?

Me: A magical process whereby criminals become annointed by God.

[wife gives me evil eye.]

John: Dad, are you joking me?

Me: Strangely enough, no.

Happily, we got to the voter registration office before that conversation deteriorated any further.  My response was off the cuff cynicism, which should surprise no one who knows me.  But pondering it further as we drove to the courthouse (John: why are we going to the courthouse? Me: To pay mommie's ticket.  John: what's a ticket? Me: A means by which the government extorts money from the innocent.  John: So the government is going to pay us money?  Me: Not in this lifetime.) it occurred to me that my earlier comment was exactly true, if in a larger sense uninformative.

Why do we feel that divine and inestimable principle, DEMOCRACY, is of such great value?  If 50% + 1 of the population of eligible voters who have bothered to register to vote and make the additional effort to actually, you know, vote, agree on anything, then that thing is not merely agreed to.  It gets more than that.  That thing is divinely sanctioned, and it becomes heresy to argue the result.  Even if it results in something like Hezbollah getting control of the Palestinian government.  Or only slightly less bad, some egregious asshat like, say, any president over the last century or their opponents getting to be leader of the free world.

It has been said, most famously by Winston Churchill, that democracy is the worst system of government devised by man, except for all the others.  We're measuring our system of government on the bad scale, which can't be a good thing.  "Jesus this sucks, but at least we don't live in a Islamic theocracy." 

"Jesus!" we might also say, "this generic spam from the black striped can tastes like ass, but at least we're not eating dog food."

Shouldn't we be thinking about inventing some fine French cuisine, or at least McDonalds?

I think that there is a fundamental disconnect between our notion of freedom and liberty, and the notion of democracy.  Or more to the point, I don't think we mean what we think we mean when we say these words.  We conflate the idea of living in a democracy with living free, with liberty.  The one must naturally lead to the other.  But does being able to select, with a few of your buddies, the town second assistant dogcatcher make you free?  Or the president?

I've commented on this blog, long ago, that I think one of the true wonders of life in America is that so few things are really political, and almost none that matter.  We have removed so many things from the political sphere, and this is good.  Where you live, whether you live; where you work or whether you work are not questions of politics.  Did I support the right candidate?  Oh, shit, the Democrats took power and now I won't be able to get work cause the registered Democratic plumbers will get all the jobs.  Oh, the humanity!

Or, oh shit, the Republicans are in charge, and it's the reeducation camps for all the performance artists, gender studies professors and community organizers. 

Hey, not a bad idea...

Anyway, that's not how it works here, thank god.  Nor does it work that way for most anything.  Politics does not effect most of what we do, except at the edges.  Which is not to say that the government doesn't have a huge effect on our daily lives - but politics, partisanship, that polite and largely gunless civil war, does not.  We should cherish this.  And to extent we do, every time we decry "partisanship" and "the politics of personal destruction" and the like.  We have a sense that that sort of thing is squalid, furtive, and somehow... dirty.  And we feel that way for the very simple reason that it is.  Politics is a zero sum game, and for you to win, I must lose.

So why do we feel that our quadrennial reality show makes us free?  The federal and state bureaucracies are not accountable to our elected officials, let alone ourselves.  Hell, governors and presidents can't even fire people, the way any CEO can.  The civil service is responsible for writing the tens of thousands of pages long federal register, that has only a passing resemblance to the laws passed by Congress, and is itself responsible for enforcing them, and can be fully as selective as it likes.  Just ask Martha Stewart. If we stopped choosing, how would our lives change?

In this country, I can live where I want, work where I want, talk to whomever I choose, write what I want, marry any woman who will put up with my shit, with a level of freedom that compares favorably with the Soviet Union if not the America of a hundred years ago.  I can be somebody!  I can do what I want, so long as I don't run afoul of any line from the five hundred pound federal register, in which case I have paramilitary law enforcement officers doing a no-knock entry on my house and shooting my dog.

They always shoot the dog.

If I build a treehouse and fail to file a environmental impact statement, or pay $500 for a building permit, or or hire a union electrician, or ...

And god forbid that I smuggle nail clippers onto a plane, or joke about bombs in front of a TSA agent.

Voting for Obama or McCain will not improve my life.  The only question is whether one of them might be able to make it worse, which is the only significant power remaining to the Presidency in the 21st Century.

Why do we think that voting makes us free?

I was listening to that new song that all the kids like, "Handlebars." And I dig it. It's groovy. Swell, even. But it also occurred to me that the one line,

I can split the atom of a molecule/of a molecule

That just doesn't play for me. I could go into the chemistry and physics of it all, but that would be pedantic and rude.

So, how about we just fix it, mkay?

I can split an atom of uranium/of uranium

Or, my favorite,

I can fuse atoms at room temperature/at room temperature

That's better, isn't it?

[wik] Another thing, when I first heard that song on the radio in the car I thought it was a parody. Mocking megalomania and whatnot. Saw the video later and was stunned by the disconnect between my perception of the tone of the song and the apparent intent of the artist.

Two weeks to the traditional tapping of the keg and the start of the 175th Oktoberfest.

That's THE Oktoberfest, not your local beer festival that lamely goes by the same name and serves swilly beer for a couple hours in the park while a band plays Kenny Loggins covers and most of the people around look like they'd rather be someplace else.

Bavaria, friends. Munich. Dirndls and lederhosen. Oktober-fucking-fest.

If you care to see how the world's greatest party is shaping up, look here.

If you care to cry yourself to sleep tonight certain that you will never have that much fun, just remember to cut lengthwise down the vein, not perpendicular.

[wik] Or, you can thank Jebus that the game Herzerljagd, advertised at the above link and which asks, "Can you see those sweet girls on your screen? Maybe you can win their hearts, but at first you have to shoot them", doesn't load right and is unplayable in IE.

At least, I sure hope they do.

Growing up I always enjoyed Scandinavian mythology. To be sure I read alot of Greek tales as well and I found them no less exciting, what with the crazy monsters and the brave heroes and the beastiality. But the Norse tales were, I dunno, edgier somehow. That world was battle, broadsword, and blood on the ice, a far cry from the Mediterranean climes, vineyards, and olive groves of the Greeks. I knew what deep snow and arctic chills were about; I don't think I could have picked an olive branch out of a lineup. While the Norse tales were more challenging, due perhaps to their obscurity relative to the domination of Greco/Roman sources on subsequent publication, their telling always resonated with me in a way the Greek stuff never did. They were both fantastical, but the Norse tales will always seem more...real.

Which brings me to the Ragnarok, the final war of Gods and Men.

As best I understand the Norse cosmology, when men die they go to one of three places: Hel, a horrible place of shadow and icy mist reserved for that sorry lot who die in their sleep of old age, and from which none return; Volkvangr, Freya's hall, for folks who died in violence but not neccessarily in glorious battle, not sure what becomes of these folks in the end; and of course Valhalla, Odin's hall.

Valhalla was reserved for the bravest warriors who fell in battle. Odin's servants, valkyrie, would choose the greatest of the slain (and indeed may have caused their deaths in the first place, by "fettering" or otherwise crippling the hero at the critical moment- there is seemingly some overlap between conceptions of Norse valkyrie and the Celtic Morrigan here), and wing them to Valhalla. There, the spirits of the Earth's mightiest warriors fight by day and feast by night, training to serve under Odin's command at the Ragnarok. And even though Fate has foretold the result and the ramifications of the final battle and the end of the universe, no party- Men, the dread Jotun (giants), or even the Gods themselves- can alter it.

So where does that leave me?

I don't have a battle, even a metaphorical one, that would hope to qualify me for Valhalla. And I'm not going to be the guy who tries to get in, you know, by default. I'm not going to tell thousands of burly vikings that I should be included because, yeah, I didn't fight an actual battle but I *DID* improve the database interface between IT, Advancement, and Admissions and got 5's across the board at my last annual review because of it, which was kinda like a battle because Jean in IT is so prickly and it's almost impossible to get a meeting with Janet in the Business Office to finalize the budget.

No sir.

My only hope is that Asgard's army will need administrators. Maybe on some fateful day the valkyrie will come, desperately in need of a chubby douchebag administrator to help do some import and config work so Valhalla's database can talk to Volkvangr's, and thereby contribute to the final battle.

Because unless that's the case, I'm probably going straight to Hel.

The email read:

Many of you may have used the derogatory term "dickhead" to refer to someone who may deservedly have earned such a title. Others of you may have earned the title for yourselves.

However, it should be noted that though they are seldom sighted, real "dickheads" do exist in the wild, as evidenced by this undercover shot taken at a pool in your neighborhood.

Speaking of lessons, also from an email this morning entitled "Why you shouldn't show off", this YouTube link which, inexplicably, had embedding disabled, elsewise I'd have just embedded it to save you the extra click.

Because I'm a giver.

I was the first human explorer to set foot on Mars.

The dream began with me stepping onto the planet, so don't ask me anything about the trip, the balance of the team, the mission objectives, or even the mode of conveyance- wasn't there.

The surface had much more terrain excitement than is seen in actual imagery. My dream-Mars was all crushed stone, almost like a carpet of gravel with bits of bigger rock here and there. It looked like the remnants of a long-extinct glacier, or huge flood- possibly two sides of the same coin, I thought. I walked around a bit, quite satisified with my spacesuit, which was very lightweight and not at all uncomfortable; in fact, I may not have been wearing a helmet at all. In short order I found that the landing site was on a shelf, really a titanic mesa, and from the edge I looked down into a huge canyon. I could see the bottom- the ambient light was pretty good, and not nearly as red as prior missions would have you believe-and one edge, but the rest of it went off to obscurity.

That's when I saw the hut.

Further down the mesa's rim I saw a small structure, unmistakably an Earth-type dwelling space. I walked over, perhaps a half-mile (hard to gauge Earth distances on foreign planets, dontchaknow), and walked inside. I don't remember there being a door. The hut enclosed a single space that mimicked my own bedroom, at least in size and the layout of the bed. Yes, the bed- there was a king-sized sleigh bed in the middle of this hut.

Then things got weird.

On the bed, just kind of hanging out, was my stepfather, who has been dead for over three years now. Or so we all thought. He explained that he had faked his death and moved to Mars to just kind of get away. You know, leave it all behind for awhile, and he wasn't particularly excited to see me. I was trying to make sense of that when I realized there were two other people in the room. I think it was one of his brothers and his sister-in-law, neither of whom at this writing is either dead or pretending to be. They knew he had been faking, and had gone back and forth to Mars a couple times to visit.

The whole scene was making me a little uncomfortable, so I went back outside to the mesa's edge. I looked again down into the canyon, and was thinking it would make a pretty good lake if someone filled it. After some moments of indecision, I figured I'd go back inside and try to get some more details. As I turned away from the canyon I saw movement farther down the rim. I could make out two, maybe more, figures slowly walking toward the hut opposite the place I had started, but at about the same distance. In short order I found them to be tourists from Earth, startled to see not just one but several people already there. They had paid a premium for the exclusivity of the destination, and were kinda pissed that it wasn't quite so exclusive.

My stepfather, meanwhile, was getting kinda pissed that all of a sudden all these people had showed up uninvited at his place.

Posted without further comment.