perfidy

It is a sign of the apocalypse, or perhaps merely the distraction of our more prolix ministers, that Geeklethal has had two posts in a row. In our secret conclave, hidden from the prying eyes of nosy readers, the Ministry has coined a new word for the state of being overwhelmed by work or other responsibilities to the point of complete inability to blog. In honor of our least productive, but highest income blogger, we call this being "Rossed."

Patton was due to write the follow up to Geeklethal's story nugget. But he's rossed. Johno would be delving into the deep arcana of music for us all, but is rossed by work and the mysterious and nefarious activities of a small New England museum. Why, I myself would be talking about giant fighting robots and the AWST article about the secret military spaceplane but for being rossed by the endless waiting for the arrival of my second spawn.

Are you rossed? Perhaps that is why you haven't been commenting lately. I know we haven't made it easy, seeing as we're not posting much new material. But just because we're slacking doesn't make it right for you to slack. So page back over to some old posts, and leave some new comments. Make that month old, stale commentary new again! Remember the Ministry isn't just about us. Mostly about us, to be sure. But it is at least a little about you.

Ministry minions will no doubt recall that Lady Lethal, the lady who was kind enough both to marry me and be present at the creation of our offspring- the Li'lest Lethal- is from Poland.

One day over the course of casual discussion, I was talking about the lame places I went on school field trips as a kid. The places that a third rate city whose glory days- if ever there were any- died before Truman did. Places like the aquarium 100 miles away. The lame local museums. The big library. The park. And the "living history"-type faux town with the re-enactors who play colonial characters like tinsmiths and constables and milkmaids, the last of whom always seemed to be churning butter. I remember being there at 8 years old, and instead of being curious about the extraordinary cleverness of a water-powered log skinner was more curious about who ate all the flippin' butter they made.

So after rambling for awhile, I asked her where they went as kids in Poland. The lame museum? The big park? The aquarium 100 miles- whoops, kilomters- away?

"Mmm, not really", she answered, "We go to Auschwitz."

Uh-HUH.

Now it seems perhaps more yoots from outside Poland ought to make the trip or, failing that, pay more attention in school. It seems the gubmint is getting a little irritated about furriners seeing the words "concentration camp" with the word "Polish", and assuming ownership, not merely geography.

The Irish Examiner has a bit about efforts to change the formal name to The Former Nazi German Concentration Camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. If that's what it takes to educate people about it, well then that's what has to be done.

But isn't it sad that enough people were confused about the blackest patch on Earth that this move was even warranted?

Ministry readers are no doubt familiar with Yale's recent exercise in diversity admissions by enrolling former Taliban official Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi. Yes, it is in a non-degree program for non-traditional students, which some folks might feel makes it not so bad. But yes, he served the Taliban in an executive capacity and remains largely unrepentant of his earlier career in oppression, which rather trumps the details of whatever program he's in.

Yale continues to stonewall, issuing only a 100-odd-word statement to inquirers. The fallout over that extraordinarily poor decision, and the lack of response to critics of it, is like stepping in a big pile of poop. Then pretending that you don't smell it. Then when someone asks why you smell like that, you ask, "like what?"

There are some folks out there that have moved beyond shock and horror at this decision, and have gone straight into retribution. I don't know the stats, but certainly alumni giving will be down this year. It will have no effect on Yale's larger economic picture, given it's wealthier by far than a significant portion of the nations of the world. But at least by not giving to Yale this year you're not supporting an institution that rewards terrorists.

Others have been considering who better might be worthy of a free education at Yale, non-degree or otherwise. If someone were to ask me, "GL, who better to go to Yale for free than a former Taliban quasi-ambassador?", my first thought might be, "Um, everybody else other than that guy." After some thought, I was leaning toward my cat, Marco, who as half-Siamese and half-Burmese gets the South Asian tip, is neutered so in a sense transgendered, and is, I must emphasize, a cat- a trifecta of diversity goodness. He would be the only cat enrolled in the institution's history, would surely represent the feline perspective in campus life, and could work toward exposing the intolerance and ending the hate. Toward cats. And I should add that the Taliban in question has only slightly more formal education than my cat, so there's that too.

Upon more serious reflection though, I would answer General Khatol Mohammad Zai. General Zai is the only female general in the country, the only airborne soldier in the country (she's made 500-some jumps which is, in military jargon, nuts), and a single mom to boot. She does not command any men, and probably never will. But she has been a military officer for decades, and is certainly a symbol, perhaps an example for young women to emulate. Not sure about her earlier days as an officer at least nominally supporting the Russians in their fight against the mujaheddin, but hey, what's the worst that could happen- she's an old communist? Lord knows she wouldn't be the first of those running around New Haven.

Yale, give her a call. Invite her over. Give her an honorary degree or something. Just make some sort of effort to recognize that it's not OK to give free educations to people complicit in mass murder.

[wik]You know what, screw the honorary degree. Upon further reflection it would be much more valuable, both to broader society and Yale specifically, for General Zai to come to campus not to receive her Doctorate of Humane Letters, but to parachute in and just kick the shit out of Yale's precious Taliban man. I mean, to have a female Afghani paratrooper tear the ass out of the guy...well, that just makes sense to me.

While reading a story entitled "Groundswell of Protests Back Illegal Immigrants" in Monday's New York Times, I came across this nugget, spread across two pages. First, the last paragraph on page one:

The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that of more than 11 million illegal immigrants, 78 percent are from Mexico or other Latin American countries. Many have children and other relatives who are United States citizens. Under the House measure, family members of illegal immigrants — as well as clergy members, social workers and lawyers — would risk up to five years in prison if they helped an illegal immigrant remain in the United States.

OK, fine, sez me - that sounds harsh. I've read and heard news stories making it clear that the authors of the legislation have no intention of criminalizing the actions of anyone simply "helping" an illegal immigrant to stay in the US, but I can understand why the Catholic Church, the illegals' families, and other aid organizations would be jumpy about the matter. So I clicked on to see page two, and its first paragraph looked like this:

(Page 2 of 2)

"Imagine turning more than 11 million people into criminals, and anyone who helps them," said Angela Sanbrano, executive director of the Central American Resource Center of Los Angeles, one of the organizers of Saturday's rally there. "It's outrageous. We needed to send a strong and clear message to Congress and to President Bush that the immigrant community will not allow the criminalization of our people — and it needed to be very strong because of the anti-immigrant environment that we are experiencing in Congress."

With no disrespect to immigrants, and no actual malice toward illegal immigrants, I find myself wondering what part of illegal does Angela Sanbrano not understand?

Those 11 million folks she's worried about are already criminals. Whether they should be or not is an issue best left to another forum, but could we drop the charade that they're not already criminals? And if the issue is immigrants' rights, the matter is pretty simple, according to present laws - as illegal immigrants they have a right to be treated fairly, humanely, and then to be transported back to wherever they came from at the earliest feasible date, absent some mitigating factor, of which there are none related to Mexican immigrants. Shitty government isn't one of the exceptions, you see.

Those that wish to have open borders, with free entry for all, can make excellent points in favor of their positions, as can those against. I find, however, that the arguments of those against purely open borders are more believable on at least one level - they don't generally seem to start their arguments with a bald-faced misstatement of fact.

Where the Times fits into all this is actually moot - the placement of the visual head-fake is probably just an accident. But anyone who read just the first page and moved on might not notice the duplicity of the arguments in favor of what is, today, still a clearly illegal activity. That would be unfortunate, and runs the risk of simply kicking the can down the road rather than addressing the issue once and for all.

For what it might be worth, if the government were to decide to lock the borders tight and properly and then to offer a one-time amnesty to all who've been so fortunate to evade the law to-date, I'd be fine with that, unlike some (many?) to the right of me on the political polarization scale.

Doing one without the other, however, would just be another act of stupidity, and doing neither would be just as bad.

Ministry Crony Phil has got himself a new band. It seems the old band succumbed to a population exposion. So the new band isn't power pop with wicked female vocals. Instead, Phil has maneuvered his way into a folky-rocky type band with wicked female vocals. Which means that Phil is now halfway to being assimilated by the DC bluegrass borg collective that ate my wife.

The Fragments are no more, long live The Hickories. It seems that Phil can't lose for winning. One band stuffed full of talented musicians sucks the gas pipe and decides to pay attention to real life, so he instantly finds another band stuffed full of talented musicians. For old time's sake, give a listen to a Fragments tune, then go listen to two of the new bits, over here. I'm sure Phil will let me know when they're playing out, because I asked him to. And then I will let you know, and if you're near the nation's capitol, you can go see them in person, like me.

[wik] Looking at the new band's website, I see that they link to Amy, who is one of the singers in my wife's band, Dead Men's Hollow. It's a small fricken world, I tell ya.

Maybe not. But the Christian Science Monitor is reporting that the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter programme might be running into some more problems. Recently, the Brits threatened to pull out of the quarter trillion dollar project over technology sharing issues. Though that seems to be on track to resolution - both sides having reported "extremely productive" talks in negotiations - there is a something else on the radar screen.

UAE owned holding firm Dubai International Capital bought Doncasters, a privately held British aerospace manufacturer, in a deal worth $1.2 billion. That company is involved with the F-35, and another congressional investigation could cause yet another row. I think that this is another case of a (relatively) innocent company being guilty of little more than "driving while arab." There is reason to be cautious about our secrets and all, but if this busts out into a minor scale controversy, you can be sure that it is much more likely to be about some hack politician's reelection chances than about a legitimate security concern. And if it pisses off the Brits, that's a damn shame, because we couldn't ask for a better ally, and should be doing all that we can to include them in, not acting like they're our wierd bug-eyed cousin wanting to borrow twenty-grand for a fur bearing trout farm.

A nautical light year is 1.15 times longer than a statute light year.

The Ministry is all about sharing.

We share so much with each other- our knowledge; our wisdom; our decades of experience with fighting robots, prostitutes, fart jokes, industrial construction, rhetoric, and prostitutes- that as a unit we are better equipped to bring enlightenment to the world than any other random sampling of five men.

Our long term goal is, at its core, quite simple: to bring our love of sharing to the scattered, feral remnants of humanity still stubbornly clinging to life after the Ragnarok, and generously share our whips and bullets with them.

But aside from cruel leather, cold steel, and the hard heart to wield them both, we want to ensure that the arts survive as well. Toward that end, we are going to write a story. We wanted to store fine literature, paintings, and sculpture in the Ministry Culture Bunker and Catastratorium, but after making a go of it found that that stuff takes up too much space. We are putting some Grecian and Chinese pottery to use, storing Kool Aid and pencils and whatnot, but anything without an apparent utilitarian application was left outside.

We felt it was up to us to do someting to ensure the written word would survive beyond the Apocalypse.

We are now crafting the literature that the mutated inheritors of the cursed Earth might care to read sometime, maybe between avoiding deathbot patrols or after outrunning a zombie horde. It's the first fiction piece co-written and serialized by participating Ministers and, although the planned release date is sometime after Doomsday, we will share drafts with our loyal reader.

Readers. Loyal readers.

Forthwith, the first installment of our first stab at serial writing:

Part 1: Diesel Angst

Alexei Weber detested the bus.

The one he waited for every morning was enough to loathe, just on its own. The engine’s rushing roar hurt his ears, and sometimes the hurt migrated between them and became a headache. The mephitic stench of burning diesel fuel singed his nostrils and made him nauseous. He didn’t like the tint on the windows, allowing those inside to see out- and in all probability laugh at him, he felt- yet preventing outsiders from seeing in. He never was quite sure what he’d find inside, hiding behind those opaque windows. Even the scale of the thing: too long, too high, with too-big tires, unsettled him.

The bus stop nearest his apartment was shabby and dark. Litter tended to accumulate there, blown on winds that in other parts were pleasant, but by the time they reached his shabby end of this shabby city were hostile. Regardless of the season and time of day, the bus stop was always in deep shadow. The old office buildings and millworks that dominated those dozen forlorn blocks of the North End weren’t good for much else now than as obstacles. The economy was long gone, leaving only huge brick husks that blocked the most direct route to somewhere else. It made grim sense to Alexei that the ones on his street would block the sun, too.

And beyond hating the bus just for being a bus, he resented it. He resented that he was reduced to riding it. He resented that the city was so broke it only ran twice a day. He resented that the only job he could land was downtown and much too far to walk, and beneath him. He resented having to live in his tiny walk-up apartment. He resented the dumb luck that put him there, and the poor decisions that kept him there.

Everything that Alexei Weber had ever done wrong was made manifest in the bus, and it came to remind him every morning.

He is, however, the more famous buckethead. For now.

Thanks, GL, for this edifying and enlightening yet soul-sucking video clip.

Everyone knows wikipedia. While at times its accuracy is less than gold standard, it is typically the most useful place to begin research on a topic. The least you can expect from wikipedia is a cogent summary and a selection of good links. At best, you have a detailed and thorough introduction. Until recently, I was only vaguely aware that there was such a thing as other wikis. Today, I spent my valuable lunch time spinning through some of it.

For some time now, wiki enthusiasts have been creating wikibooks, which takes the idea of the wikipedia to a new and greater level of depth. I was cruising around the site, and found a wikibook Movie Making Manual. While reasing this manual isn't the same as going to film school or an apprenticeship with Steven Spielberg, it does provide a great deal of insight into the movie making process for someone like your 'ol pal Buckethead who don't know movie making from shinola. Of especial interest to me, being the wordsmith that I is, was the section on screenwriting. While the level of information there is, as yet, still rather sparse, I could imagine that something like this crossed with MIT's OpenCourseWare could be a really cool thing indeed.

Also of use are the vasty deeps of wikiquote, where I found this charming little bit I had been trying to remember for ages:

Listen up maggots. You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We are the all singing, all dancing crap of the world. We are all part of the same compost heap.

Also chock full of grist for your reading mill is wikisource, where you can find among other treasures, John Buchan's Greenmantle.

No shit, it's Angle Grinder Man. A real life super hero, defending an oppressed public from the evils of malicious traffic and parking enforcement officers.

[wik] Btw, follow the external links at the bottom of the wikipedia article. They are... interesting.

I assume that you are prepared for the coming Avian Flu Pandemic. If you've listened to the sage advice of the Ministry Bureau for Zombie Preparedness, you already have most of what you need in your Zombie Preparedness Kit. You've got your water supply - one gallon per person per day, for a month. You have non-perishable foods from munchies to MREs. You've stocked up on toothpaste, soap, toilet paper, little sachets of smelly stuff, and other essentials. You've got your generator, and an adequate fuel supply. Flashlights, tools, candles, radios and other survival implements are close to hand. You have plenty of whatever medications you need on a regular basis. For me, that's the twenty four year scotch and a couple cartons of cigarettes, but your mileage may vary. You've packed kit bags for various emergencies, and they are easily accessible or already in the car. You have weaponry: aluminum baseball bat, shotgun, .45, and ammo. And a machete. Can't forget the machete. To upgrade your ZPK to full Avian Flu Pandemic compliance, only a few additional items are needed. Lots of hand sanitizer. Medical filter masks. Rabbit's foot. But you knew that.

One thing you might not have considered is the effect of a global flu pandemic on your stock portfolio. Never fear, though. The eggheads at Citigroup have thought it all through, and offer sound advice on where and when to jump, money-wise, when the grim reaper starts a-reapin. Do I sell my airline stocks? What sectors are sound investments in a mild pandemic that aren't in a highly lethal virulent epidemic? Are bonds a safe haven, or will the collapse of the global trade network place unsupportable strains on the US dollar? Well, now you'll know. We'll be lying in a chaise lounge in the Ministry Catastratorium and Epidemiological Center with the HiDef tuned to bloomberg watching our portfolios rocket into the stratosphere while you are dealing with half-starved and fully mad mobs are wrecking your town and your retirement. Unless you plan ahead. Then you, like us, can learn what a beautiful word schadenfreude is.

[wik] I just trolled through the Ministry Archives looking for the post on the Zombie Preparedness Kit that I was sure I wrote, but I'll damned if I can find the fricken thing. I did find these two posts, but they only mention it, they don't describe it. I guess I have some homework for tomorrow.

Woot!

Who knew Bradley would beat Pittsburgh? Other than me, that is. Well, "Who knew..." isn't the right word.

"Who pulled out of his ass the crazy idea that..." seems more a appropriate start to that sentence. I apologize for the imprecison.

The NCAA walls will surely come crashing down, real soon now, but until they do, I'm alone in 4th place, with a bullet.

I say again, "Woot!".

And yes, the title of this post works on multiple levels. Thanks for noticing.

[wik] To nobody's surprise, including mine, Ohio State has taken the pipe. Bummer. I'm now #8, with a bullet, to the head. At least I didn't have the Buckeyes winning it. And it could be worse - the two guys who run the pool, no slouches they, has each had his pick to win it all get dusted. So at least I'll probably finish ahead of them.

Help me out here - would this be an example of correlation, causation, or just a craptacular use of computing power?

From this morning's inbox: 

Dear Amazon.com Customer, We've noticed that customers who have purchased The Complete Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson also purchased books by Edward Kennedy. For this reason, you might like to know that Edward Kennedy's My Senator And Me : A Dog's Eye View Of Washington, D.C. will be released soon. You can pre-order your copy at a savings of 35% by following the link below. 

While I find that all fascinating, I think it points to the limitations inherent in today's electronic commerce marketing programs. The only suggestions I recall having taken seriously from Amazon (a company, by the way, whose loyal customer I am) are those from the same author as the book which triggered the recommendation. I don't know why that is, it just is.

And I'm reminded of a previous Amazon oddity, found who knows where. The only reference I'm able to find to it is in this entry at a site I'm sure I've never visited until today. I know I originally saw it in a blog somewhere, this past December, and I've convinced myself that it wasn't in an entry from one of my compatriots here at the Ministry, so I'm not going to look back any farther.

Oh, the oddity? If you didn't see it at the time, you might get a chuckle out of it. It was an Amazon search for "laserdisc". At the time, I found it funny enough that I saved it, correctly assuming that Amazon would spackle over whatever glitch existed in their search engine. First page of results, scanned and cropped from an a PDF I retained of the search, below the fold.

[wik] I ought to point out that I'm certain the Complete Calvin and Hobbes collection is worth every penny, even though I've not been able to get my 11 year old daughter to let loose of it long enough to actually read it front to back, four times, like she has.

[alsø wik] Feh. Even saved in an intelligent format, the addition of the picture made the page load too slowly, and I can't see inconveniencing each reader with delays while this post remains on the front page. If you're still curious, however, have a look at it here.

[alsø alsø wik] The Ministry of Future Perfidy can no longer bring itself to care about page load times, the image is restored.

Some pursuits are more trivial than others. Among the most trivial, NCAA March Madness pools.

Why would I say this? Simple - I participate in at least one, every year, and I'm normally mathematically eliminated by halftime of the "play in" game. What better reason to call an activity trivial than the simple fact that you suck at it? I've no idea why I've done so poorly in most of the last 20 years or so, but there you have it, and it must be due to the triviality of the undertaking (he says to himself).

But not this year, no sirree.

I'm participating in a Toronto-based pool, run by a couple guys whose NFL pool I also joined this past season, and as of 7:30PM Saturday, March 18, I'm tied with one other guy for 13th place out of 75 poolsters. I've given up trying to figure out my odds, say, of beating the poor bastard whose pick for NCAA Champion (Kansas) has already bitten the green weenie. My only clear misstep so far was in thinking Tennessee might make the Final Four.

And my ace in the hole appears to be the (soon to be proven retarded, I'm sure) presumption that my Ohio State Buckeyes will lose to nobody but Duke. In that particular bit of fantasy, I appear to be alone, which will stand me in good stead should lightning strike and I end up correct.

Wait - it just occurred to me why I continue this trivial pursuit: It's just about the only time all year that I find college basketball interesting. It's surely not that, in the abstract, I actually give a care who wins. But now I at least have a specific reason to root for Ohio State against Florida, which has to make me fairly unique, among Texans.

The original Bob Barker was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1974.

Talking Heads started out as a group of art-school students fronted by an emotionally distant caffeine junkie and playing skeletal, angular songs topped with disjointed lyrical extursions. But they ended up the 1980s as critically-acclaimed, stadium-filling stars playing a heady stew of Caribbean, African, funk, pop, and postpunk. All along, frontman David Byrne sang lyrics in a high, thin warble that for all their elliptical imagery, seemed to always hunger for human connection. Detachment and confusion were common themes; many of their best known songs, from "Once In A Lifetime" to "Heaven" and "Life During Wartime" were about detachment, wonder, the stultifying effect of happiness, and the bracing emotional wallop of misery.

Rhino Records (who else?) are in the process of reissuing all eight of the band's studio albums in a two-sided DualDisc format. One side is a regular CD containing a remastered version of the original album plus the inevitable bonus tracks, and the other side is a DVD containing a 5.1 Surround Sound mix of the album plus some bonus features like lyrics, photos, and videos. I have to admit that I'm not always thrilled when labels do this - I still have CD players that choke on any disc that doesn't conform to Blue Book standards, and my new copy of More Songs About Buildings And Food won't play on one of my computers. I'm also resolutely old school; DVD content doesn't typically thrill me when appended to an album (more on this later). I'm getting over myself, though... if more bands do what Green Day did with their excellent Bullet In A Bible and release video and audio versions of the same concert in one package, I'll be a happy man. But for now I need to simply recognize that most people younger than even my tender years are perfectly OK with this outlandish new thing they call tech-mology, and just let it rest.

But I'm here to talk about More Songs About Buildings And Food, Talking Heads' second album, originally released in 1978. The name of the album is a bit of joke on the dreaded "sophomore slump," but it's not an advertisement of the contents. Well, "The Big Country" actually is a song about buildings and food, but only obliquely, so I will pretend it doesn't count. Instead, Talking Heads' second album sees them moving away from the very stark and spiky arrangements they used on their debut, and starting to incorporate some of the soul and overtly funky gestures that would underpin their later, more experimental work. Although all the songs on Buildings and Food were written by David Byrne, producer Brian Eno (in his first of many collaborations with the group) moved Chris Franz' drums and Tina Weymouth's bass to the front of the mix. As later proven on their own work as the Tom Tom Club, Franz and Weymouth had a greater sense of fun and of uncerebral playfulness than Byrne. These tendencies were already on display, and their earnestness helps offest the nerdy coolness of David Byrne's persona.

One thing that sets More Songs About Buildings And Food apart from the Talking Heads albums that came after is that it almost sounds unfinished. That's not to say the songs are half-baked (they aren't) or the production job has glaring holes in it (it doesn't), but rather that you can hear the band, especially Byrne, reaching for something new all the time. The band's best album, for my money, is the double live The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads, which includes live performances of some of the material from Buildings and Food. Before I gave the latter album a very close listen, I thought that all of David Byrne's little experiments on the live record - stretching out or smothering his vowels, spastically repeating phrases or chop|ping them in|to harsh syl|la|bles - were a function of his being on stage and looking for a way to do something new with a lyric he's sung a thousand times before. But this is not so - the same kinds of bizarre little tics festoon the original album versions, and the music that underlies them sounds just as spontaneous as it does on stage.

Although Eno had begun to deepen the band's sound with sneaky production tricks, Buildings And Food still sounds like it was recorded live in the studio. This is very different from his later contributions to the band's sound, which would result in complex audio collages that sounded frankly (and gloriously) studio-generated, and that the band would have to work hard to approximate on stage. But for the time being, Eno decorated songs like "Stay Hungry," "I'm Not In Love" and "The Girls Want To Be With The Girls" with judicious and subtle intrusions that don't obscure the band's odd hybrid of postpunk and rigid funk. In fact, Eno's contributions are so subtle as to be practically stealthy, only revealing their complexity under close scrutiny.

Just listen to "Found A Job," for example. Although it sounds at first blush like a simple scritchy and nervous four-piece arrangement with a very dry (echoless) sound, the choruses are loaded with panned guitars and background keyboard flourishes, and David Byrne's vocals suddenly sound like they're coming from a much bigger room. While perhaps not as thrilling as the adventures of later albums, the excellent songwriting and production on Buildings and Food rewards repeated (even... obsessive...) listening, with headphones.

What really elevate Buildings And Food above merely being a step forward from their debut (titled '77) are the last two songs, the famous cover of Al Green's "Take Me To The River" and the airy narrative song "The Big Country". The former was the first time on album that Talking Heads really relaxed into the deep grooves that Franz, Weymouth, and keyboardist/guitarist Jerry Harrison were capable of creating. The bubbling bass line and open textures seemed especially novel after nine straight songs full of twitchy energy, and were a harbinger of the band's explorations in the years to come. On the other hand, "The Big Country" featured possibly David Byrne's most lucid and straightforward lyric yet, presaging the narrative dexterity he would bring to songs on their next album, Fear of Music, such as "Heaven" and "Life During Wartime." Underpinned by an incongruous-sounding slide guitar, Byrne's narrator muses from an airplane about the cities and buildings and fields he sees below, muses on the miracles of production and transportation that tie them all together, and then suddenly dissolves in a fit of what - ennui? - boredom? - self-loathing? Whatever the intent, the lyric is more finely drawn and evocative than anything Byrne had yet done.

For the reissue, Rhino have appended alternate versions of songs - alternate takes of "The Big Country" and "I'm Not In Love," a countryish version of "Thank You For Sending Me An Angel," and a 1977 version of "Stay Hungry" that closely recalls the feel, if not exactly the sound, of the outstanding live version on The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads. None of these additions are particularly essential, but they are interesting for those who are curious about the band's self-conscious evolutionary goals.

What are valuable, though, are the DVD extras. (For the record, that is the first time in history I've had occasion to write the foregoing sentence.) Two live videos, of "Found A Job" from 1978 and "Warning Sign" from 1979, do a great service for those of us who were born too late to see the band in their heyday. Whereas Jonathan Demme's film Stop Making Sense, which chronicled Talking Heads' 1984 tour, presented a band who seemed relaxed and comfortable with a large stage, a gigantic audience, and the funky presence of the great Bernie Worrell on keyboards, the earlier footage shows a much younger, hungrier group far more intent on getting across. That's not to say that the band had become complacent by 1984, but rather that by then they had come to expect everything would go as planned.

The difference can be most easily seen by watching bassist Tina Weymouth. In the 1978 clip, filmed in New York, she is a tiny ball of energy, almost being played by her bass rather than the other way around. She rocks back and forth and stares intently at Jerry and David as she absolutely rips into the acrobatic bass line of "Found A Job." (The bass, too, is high up in the mix on this video, and should forever put to bed the calumny that Tina Weymouth could not play her instrument.) By 1984, she's barefoot and smiling, relaxed and happy as she practically surfs on the mile-deep, funky grooves she lays down. It's not a difference of competence; it's a difference of comfort, and it's a bit of a revelation to actually see the how the band worked together in their early days before MTV, world music, and the acrimony that would break them apart.

As befits a crew of ex-art students, the "photo extras" section of the DVD is well put together too. The mishmash of backstage candid shots and album cover treatments from the USA and Japan is okay enough, but the Western Union telegram welcoming the Heads to San Francisco and concluding "WELCOME TO SAN FRANCISCO WE LIKE YOUR RECORDS BREAK A HEAD -THE RESIDENTS" is just... super cool. Cool also are the numerous lyric sheets in various stages of completion, which probably (though it's hard to tell) give a glimpse into the recondite depths of the creative mind of David Byrne. Also included is the very curious and undated "Self Deconstruction of a Song," an essay about "The Big Country." It begins...

The first thing we hear is a bottleneck/slide guitar. It brings to mind a sound which was originally used in country and western music to mimic violins. It is not meant to mimic violins here but to mimic country and western music. This, along with the initial major third chord sequence, brings to mind a basic, earthy down-home feeling which implies a primitivism and lack of sophistication. (At the same time, in the context of Talking Heads, it implies an intentional primitivism and an awareness of this nievete [sic])

... and continues in the same vein for a few hundred words. While not exactly required reading, it is unmistakably (and touchingly) the product of an art/philosophy education circa 1975, which you can take, leave, or amuse yourself with as the mood takes you.

Finally, the 5.1 Surround Sound remix on the DVD side is absolutely spectacular. Even on my non-surround, ten year old stereo components, I heard details in the production I'd never even suspected were there before. In fact, the full impact of Brian Eno's deft hand on the band's sound isn't fully appreciated until you've heard all the tiny, tiny little complicated noises he packed into songs that on older CD releases sounded fairly straightforward. This new tech-mology scares and confuses me, but I think I like it!

Talking Heads are easy to take for granted. Their songs are perhaps on the radio more now than when they were together. The band are practically iconic, and their videos especially are practically a capsule cultural history of the mid-1980s. But every one of the band's albums contain deeper pleasures than the radio hits we all know. Rhino have long been one of the best reissue labels in the world, even after their acquisition by Warner Brothers, and if the other seven Talking Heads albums have been presented as well as More Songs About Buildings And Food they have a lot to be proud of. Now, if Rhino would only have had the decency to release the album as two discs, a DVD and a blue-book compliant CD (as was evidently done for the European release) instead of the clumsy gimmick of a DualDisc, this package would have been perfect.

This post also appears at blogcritics.org

After a moderately long hiatus, Actual Facts returns with a fact filled exploration of the world of the Basques:

• Basques were one of the first European groups to discover surfing. The word for this activity in Basque is "Urmugitukara", or "way of moving on water".
• At least one Basque monarch is believed to have died while surfing.
• More Basques live in hillside villages than do any other group anywhere else in the world, with the exception of Kansas.
• The Basque language is unrelated to any other known language. In fact, some linguists dispute whether it is even a language.
• The Basques are the second most-hated ethnic groups in the world, falling short of only the damn herring-eating Norwegians.
• It is believed that the Basques were the first proponents of organized games of chance, after a primitive casino consisting only of dice games was unearthed during a dig in Lapourd in 1923.

The Ministry would like to extend felicitations to Murdoc, of Murdoc Online, which blog just celebrated its third blogoversary. We would also like to note that for all his shameless backpatting, the Ministry is still five days older, and wiser. If not nearly as popular.

Murdoc of Murdoc Online, skirting the edges of responsible journalism, has been recruited/drafted/shanghaid/volunteered for the job of MC for Winds of Change's new feature the "Military Transformation Uplink." In concert with Joe Katzman of the aforementioned WoC, professional publications Defense Industry Daily, Military.com's DefenseTech, and eDefense Online, Murdoc will be hitting you monthly with a barrage of high tech military linkage. (All of these sites are great resources for military type stuff, even the stuff that Murdoc doesn't link.)

The first edition is up now at WoC. If, like me, you have a hankering for things that go boom in a particularly high tech manner, go check it out. Murdoc outdid himself on this one.

I've been looking for this forever. Finally! Airline seat pitches, around the world. They oughta be showing this when you're buying your ticket on Expedia, or whatever.

Tired of boring crucifixi? Potbellied Buddhas with goofy expressions leave you cold? Magen Davids and Green Crescents fail to inspire?

Well, you can now have your own physical manifestation of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. With a few inexpensive items from the craft store, and whatever you remember from third grade elmers glue experiments, you can create a facsimile of FSM and his noodly appendages.

[wik] Hat Tip: Owlish, by way of Rocket Jones. Owlish also links to a crocheted FSM hat, a silver FSM brooch, and a plush FSM toy you can buy on eBay.

We're still a few painful years away from the desperately overdue, gasping death whimpers of what will be considered the worst Presidency of modern history. The sheer breadth and depth of the incompetence just takes your breath away, you know? It's such a sad tale of empty bullshit promises, excuse-making, and desperate reliance on short-term memories.

• The people who created and fucked up the war in Iraq are the same people that created current tax policy
• The Iraq crowd told us energy privatization would result in a healthy market. As a recent WPost article makes clear, they couldn't have been more wrong -- every objective of these efforts has been a colossal failure. Well, except for the real objective -- to make money for their buddies in the Energy industry. A-1 success there!
• The Iraq crowd tells us that deficits don't matter. They tell us that debt doesn't matter. They certainly act like neither of these things exist.
• The Iraq crowd tells us global warming doesn't exist. Now they're telling us it doesn't matter.
• The Iraq crowd rammed the "prescription drug benefit" for seniors through Congress. Who wins? Drug companies, of course! Who loses? Everyone else. The kicker is the GOP-inserted clause preventing negotiation on prices. Exactly how the fuck did that get in there?
• The Iraq crowd "handled" Katrina with the same efficiency, effectiveness, and compassion that they give to other significant issues.
• In six short years, the Iraq crowd has managed to convince the majority of the people on the planet to hate America. Much more worrying is the fact that they've made excellent inroads on their long term project of convincing the rest of the planet to hate Americans. If you're like Bush and never bothered to leave the country prior to becoming its President, that doesn't even register as a problem. Especially when you're armed with "quitters are traitors" bumper stickers.
• They're not against minorities; they're for whites. See the difference?
• They're not against gays; they're for families. See the difference?
• They're not against foreigners; they're for America. See the difference?
• They're not against other religions; they're for Christianity. See the difference?
• But mostly, and above all else, they're for themselves. They're laughing at, and mocking, the rest of America for not doing the same. It's business as usual, baby.

So why Evil Twin Theory? Bush's Chief of Domestic Policy, Claude Allen, was arrested last week for a bizarre scheme involving fraudulent returns of goods to department stores. It turns out that Claude Allen has a twin with a questionable past. Could Allen's twin have been the one doing the crimes? Beats me. But it also turns out that the popular drug Ambien may have certain equally bizarre side effects, including sleepwalking and sleep-shoplifting, or something like that. So maybe all those long, exhausting nights of doing exactly what Rove and Cheney told him drove Allen to take an Ambien now and again, and he went on a sleep-fraud spree. Twenty-five times.

Is Bush on Ambien? Does he have an evil twin? Because I can't for the life of me figure out why, short of sheer stupidity and/or complete lack of interest, an honest reason for the continuous stream of fuckups the most pathetic administration in modern times has generated.

Way back when I asked a simple question: Find one moderately complex policy initiative of the Bush Administration that was proposed (with its predicted effects), that resulted in a success and the achievement of the desired goals. Just one, please.

I'll give you moral relativity: Evil equals the mass of your bullshit times the square of the pain you cause.

I've been mulling over a concept I'm labelling birthright, and I'll have more to say on it over the next week. It's the root of the current political dysfunction.

Remember, kids: Birthright trumps ethics.

[wik]I am feeling harsh today, so let me apologize in advance for feathers ruffled. Please keep in mind that my conservative compadres here have about as much in common with Bush as they do with Castro. Your party has been hijacked by cultural terrorists and vandals.

When the bird flu apocalypse hits, all of you will be clamoring, whining and begging for a seat in the Ministry Catastratorium and Epidemiology Reserve. Suck up to us now, and get a good spot on the waiting list, because top bird flu maven Robert G. Webster is predicting a 50% chance of scattered flu epidemic in the coming year. When the grippe hits the fan, it will be too late.

If you can't get into the MCER, you can follow the advice in this helpful missive. Remember, when bird flu goes all apeshit on the human populace, it will be a lot like the black plague, except faster. If you hope to be the Boccaccio for the new plague century, remember that you'll have weeks, not decades, to write your decameron. Stock up on your skeleton and death themed decorations now and beat the rush.

Allan Janus: Puzzle or Enigma?

The Ministry realizes that most of its readership consists largely of rude and unsophisticated bumpkins, militaristic weapons fetishists, and bohemian music lovers with a sadly circumscribed mental horizon. As part of our ongoing attempt to provide at least a facsimile culture and erudition, we present part one of the Ministry Culture and Arts series.

Today, we focus on the works of Allan Janus, photographer, tintypist and occasional freelance dirigible pilot. A native of the Washington, DC, area, Janus cast a wavering eye on the life and landscape around him. He attempted to capture that vision on film. While the art establishment rightly ignored him, he soldiered on in near total anonymity. Over a period of decades, punctuated by the metronymic regularity of rejection notices, Janus acumulated an impressive (if only in bulk) body of work.

By far the most important collection of Janus' work is held by the Janus Foundation of Washington Grove, Maryland, which maintains the virtual Janus Museum. The Janus foundation is attempting to catalog Janus' work, but is hamstrung by a tragic lack of ready grant money or the generous support of wealthy and indiscriminate patrons.

Some examples from the Janus oeuvre:

Gaggle Advancing, Accokeek

Sheep may Safely Gaze, Accokeek, Maryland

Landscape with Devon Cow, Accokeek

Cheap Trick have always seemed pretty ludicrous to me. In part, I'm sure that the band meant it to be this way. The visual gag that pits the gawky geekiness of guitarist Rick Neilsen and the pudgy accountant chic of drummer Bun E. Carlos against the pouffy prettiness of bassist Tom Petersson and singer Robin Zander has been sustaining the band's stage presence for years. And anybody who shows up with five necks on his guitar isn't exactly going for gravitas.

But the rest of their ludicrousness is purely my problem. My first introduction to Cheap Trick came in 1988, when as an impressionable 14 year old, I thought that their big comeback hit, "The Flame" was the hottest thing in a long, hot summer. But even though I was young, impressionable, more than a little stupid and utterly oblivious to the finer things in life, the band's total committment to the drecky, schmaltzy silliness that was "The Flame" even then struck me as, well, pretty ludicrous. Around the same time they put out their cover of "Don't Be Cruel," a slight and little recording dressed up in studio trickery. One day it hit me; these guys are cheesy, they know it, and I love it.

But if Cheap Trick have run for thirty years now on an inexhaustible supply of silliness, loud guitars, and giant hooks, it is a testament to the durability of those eternal virtues. They are a band who have always seemed to be more than the sum of their parts. With the exception of one or two absolutely flawless songs that should be presented to future generations as emblems of perfection (I'm thinking of "Surrender" and "I Want You To Want Me"), I have always been hard pressed to define what makes Cheap Trick's music so compelling, so endlessly entertaining, when it is also so insubstantial.

Well, I think I've figured it out: it's a trick. Smoke and mirrors. The closer you look, the more it melts away and the more the baby unicorn behind the curtain looks like a badly malformed cow fetus floating in formaldehyde. But just as people never tire of Penn & Teller, David Copperfield, and the guys running the three card monte game outside the bus depot, I can't ever get tired of Cheap Trick. Take my money! This is fun!!

As part of their ongoing effort to monetize every niche and corner of their prodigious back catalog (it's called churn), Sony/Legacy have finally taken it upon themselves to reissue a number of Cheap Trick's mid-period albums in slick new remastered and expanded packages. The pick of these is probably 1979's Dream Police, which for my money is probably the last Cheap Trick album I'd urge anyone to run and by. Wait. That didn't come out right. It's not that Dream Police is a bad album, not that. What I mean is, it's the last solid album they made, and after 1980 the band's output became decidedly... let's be generous; uneven.

The reissue of Dream Police is a definite improvement over previous CD versions available in the USA. The new mastering job puts every instrument in its place, from the steely multioctave thronk of Tom Petersson's 12-string bass to the keening strings that overlay the title track. The bonus tracks too add value: live versions of "The House is Rockin' (With Domestic Problems)", "Way of the World", and "I Know What I Want" revisit the band's classic hard-hitting Live At Budokan sound, and a stringless version of "Dream Police" reveals just what a slight creation that song is.

And I think that's the key to Cheap Trick. When Bob Dylan writes a song, he builds you a 12-cylinder Duesenberg - a juggernaut clad in steel and burlwood that purrs and roars and can top 200 miles per hour. When Cheap Trick write a song, it has two pedals and a little propeller on top, and if you pump your legs fast enough and pray, you might get airborne and not die. Songs like that rely completely on the strength of the personalities behind them, and dedication to minimalism is Cheap Trick's greatest strength. No matter how you slice it, "Dream Police" is a ludicrous song, practically sub-Spinal Tap in its lyrical complexities and burdened with a hook that labors a little more than it should. But it all works in spite of that. Minimalism means not burdening songs down with more than they can carry, and there is an underappreciated art to that. I defy you to listen to "Dream Police" all the way through and not be gripped with an inescapable urge to keen out "Police, Police!" with Robin Zander during the rideout chorus. The band have enough charisma, enough goofy-pretty conviction, that the primary colors they work with end up seeming as subtle in their way as Van Gogh's "Starry Night."

The album itself is enough of a hooky ride to make it worth having, with the unsubtle thrills of the grinding "Gonna Raise Hell" (about raising hell), the barely restrained throbbing of "Need Your Love" (about needing love), and the Beatles-meet- Alice-Cooper rocker "I'll Be With You Tonight" (which is about how tonight he's gonna be with her, tonight). But the bonus tracks do act as welcome reminders of the greatness that was Cheap Trick on stage, and the track-by-track commentary notes by the band in the liner notes are more informative than most. While I will probably wait a lifetime to read liner notes as brutally honest as the ones Elvis Costello wrote for the Rykodisc reissue of Goodbye Cruel World, which began "Congratulations! You've just purchased our worst album," it is still fun to read Bun E. Carlos' thoughts on Cheap Trick's songwriting, or to discover that the band in general agree that the album would have been better if they'd have laid off touring so much during recording.

It is also a surprise to realize that the band started recording Dream Police before they hit it big. If you listen to the albums in order of release, it definitely seems like Cheap Trick hit their stride with 1977's In Color and 1978's Heaven Tonight. After that came their commercial breakthrough with the platinum smash of Live at Budokan and then their first dealing-with-success album, Dream Police, which seems a little forced; the ideas just a little thinner, the songs not quite as transcendent.

But that chronology is wrong. Cheap Trick recorded started recording Dream Police before they toured Japan. They surely weren't feeling the pressure of following up a smash hit at the time. Therefore if Dream Police is cheesier and kitschier than their four prior albums, it because the band were rushing to put out a followup; it's an intrinsic part of Cheap Trick's nature, part of what made them who they were. No, their first true post-success album was 1980's fairly wretched George Martin Production, All Shook Up. And although they would continue to produce albums of varying quality, becoming ever more professional as they went, it's pretty clear that sky-high success was too big a thing for the little band from Rockford, Illinois. (The runaway success of "The Flame" notwithstanding; all four members of the band have expressed regret, saying they hate the song. (Of course, it's easy to say that when you're sitting on a big pile of money.))

Not that Cheap Trick ever really seemed like they needed success. Their act was never arena-sized. If you see Cheap Trick today, you will get what you always got; a pudgy accountant playing drums like Gene Krupa, a skinny weirdo in tapered trousers with a five-necked guitar, a bass player who covers three octaves at once, and a big-voiced singer delivering giant choruses. Cheap Trick are a quintessential bar band, one who lucked into grabbing the brass ring and nearly let it undermine them. Dream Police is a slight but rewarding artifact of late-70's power pop. What more do you want?

(This post also appears at blogcritics.org)

Chef has departed the sunny highlands of South Park, Colorado for parts unknown. The reason? South Park has become infested with religious bigotry. While I might sympathize with Isaac - religious bigotry is not a pretty sight - one might have made with equal force the claim that South Park is banal and tasteless. Or homophobic, racist, speciesist, discrimatory towards those with mental, physical and spiritual handicaps, and in general highly offensive to celebrities.

In the words of Nathan Arizona (nee Huffheim), "that's its whole reason de etra." But is this the whole story? Did Chef realize only last Tuesday that the show is offensive to the faithful? SP co-founder Matt Stone has a different perspective:

He didn't come right out and say the word, but Stone is hinting strongly that Hayes is being a hypocrite when he says he's leaving "South Park" because of the way it treats religions. Stone says he feels Hayes' beef with the show stems only from the fact that the musician is a Scientologist and last year, the show began poking fun at his religion.

Stone said, "This is 100 percent having to do with his faith of Scientology. He has no problem -- and he's cashed plenty of checks -- with our show making fun of Christians."

Stone said they never heard a peep out of Hayes until they did a show on Scientology.

Well, if that is the case, I am not particularly surprised. Scientologists are a prickly lot. I imagine this is a natural result of maintaining faith in an artificial religion created by a hack science fiction writer on a bet.

I haven't watched the show in years, so Chef's departure will cause me no pain. Nevertheless, I am sure that the Ministry will join me in wishing Chef well as he ventures into the wide world beyond the borders of South Park. And maybe convert to a sensible religion, like The Church of Elvis, or the Mormons.

No one on Mars would have believed in the first years of the twenty-first century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than and yet as mortal as his own; that as Martians busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency they went to and fro over this red globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter...

At most they there might be other men upon the blue world, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this Mars with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the new millenium came the great disillusionment.

Google Maps has now embraced the Red Planet.

In Friday's OpinionJournal Best of the Web Today, James Taranto included a story entitled "Docs for Starvation", highlighting this news item:

"More than 260 doctors yesterday called on the American authorities at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp to allow detainees to starve themselves to death," reports the Daily Telegraph of London. We guess that explains hospital food, but if the docs want the prisoners to die, aren't there quicker and more humane ways of accomplishing it?

Now, I'm clearly a fan of snark, evidenced, inter alia, by the fact that I read and enjoy Best of the Web each weekday that Taranto's not on vacation.

So I read it and chuckled a bit, then moved on. Later, however, I got a link to a story in The Independent that more fully described things, and was somewhat embarrassed by my earlier chuckling. Why I'm telling you this is beyond me, because none of you were there when I was chuckling, nor was anyone else, but mild guilt has strange effects. Among other things, the Indy article points out that:

More than 250 medical experts are launching a protest today against the practice - which involves strapping inmates to "restraint chairs" and pushing tubes into the stomach through the nose. They say it breaches the right of prisoners to refuse treatment.

...

Since August they have been routinely force-fed, an excruciatingly painful practice that causes bleeding and nausea. The doctors say: "Fundamental to doctors' responsibilities in attending a hunger striker is the recognition that prisoners have a right to refuse treatment.

"The UK Government has respected this right even under very difficult circumstances and allowed Irish hunger strikers to die. Physicians do not have to agree with the prisoner, but they must respect their informed decision." The World Medical Association has prohibited force-feeding and the American Medical Association backed the WMA's declaration.

(ellipses mine)

Damn, I said to myself, the docs have a point. Contrary to Mr. Taranto's punchline, it's not the doctors who want people to die - it's the people who themselves want to die. All of which, in retrospect, is quite obvious, so shame on me.

I'm not of a mind with all other sentiments reported in the article, such as the UN's demands that the Guantanamo Bay detention camp be closed down, at least not that it should be closed down because of the force feeding. But I don't have trouble agreeing with them when they say that "...treatment such as force-feeding and prolonged solitary confinement could amount to torture."

I can even understand why the military command at Camp X-Ray would think force feeding was preferable to body bags filled with dead detainees. Understanding, however, isn't the same as agreement, and I think that if the detainees prefer to shuffle off their mortal coils rather than to remain in detention, that's their right, and that right shouldn't be infringed.

And no, I don't think that because the only good terrorist is a dead terrorist (even though this is self-evident). In fact I don't even think that everyone at Camp X-Ray is a terrorist, or even deserves necessarily to be (or still be) detained. I'm comfortable that some of them deserve it, and I only wish the military could be a bit more crisp about sorting all that out, without releasing folks who will do harm after being freed, and without returning inmates to home countries in circumstances in which they'd be in personal danger. Both types of detainees exist, along with the odd innocent, and not everything at Camp X-Ray is wrong - perhaps most things at Camp X-Ray aren't wrong.

But force-feeding prisoners who'd prefer to let it all end naturally seems clearly wrong.

Apparently, Buddhists are also subject to the temptations that the flesh doth surely hold. A Japanese Buddhist priest was arrested for schtuping a teenage prostitute. But we should go easy on him, because he was under a lot of stress.

Well, at least it was a girl he went after.

It's not Dubai, friends...this is one of remarkably rare times I'm with the President. The reason this deal should have gone through smoothly is that pissing off foreign investors is a very stupid thing for America to do, now. Somebody's obviously briefed Bush on this fact, and that somebody failed to find a way to convince Congress of the same thing. This is a political bungling of the highest order; the issue should never have been allowed on the public's radar. The public has responded in a highly predictable manner -- rampant xenophobia and plenty of water-cooler talk about what's "obvious", and that of course American control of things like ports is a good idea.

The problem is that the only reason the US economy and financial system hasn't crashed and burned is that foreigners have put trillions of dollars into buying parts of America. Some of the biggest buyers are the Chinese (circa $300 Billion a year) and Arab nations; we have our biggest trade deficits with nations and regions we consider to be "nasty", and we're dependent on them. The total foreign investment the country needs is on the order of $600 Billion a year, thanks to crackwhore-like management of the country's finances by the fundamentalists-in-charge. If that $600 Billion should start to dry up, you can expect a huge increase in interest rates, shortly followed by the financial meltdown of the US government, which is on an utterly unsustainable course. Ripping away significant foreign investment will cause a decline in the overall value of assets within the country, and generally retard growth heavily. Since crazy growth rates are the only mathematical means left of avoiding inbound financial catastrophe, it doesn't seem like good policy to me.

Congress just sent a message to foreign investors everywhere -- that they're not welcome, and that they can't own "key" infrastructure assets. The subtext is that anything they do can and is subject to forfeiture or control. Bills floating around congress defined "key assets" as anything from farms to ports to chemical companies. In short, much of America's manufacturing base can be classified as key, and a security asset.

Of course, America wouldn't be so vulnerable to this if (to repeat myself) the crackwhores weren't in charge of the roll of cash. And the people who put them there will never believe that there are any consequences to their actions until the hammer drops on them personally.

The internets are buzzing about two recently-released videos of new DARPA projects featuring motile robots. Both videos are fascinating, yet positively awful. Try to hold back the horriplations from your scalp as you watch this six legged robot climb any vertical surface in a way eerily reminiscent of how crustaceans and larger insects do move. If you thought watching a computerized Tom Hanks in "The Polar Express" was a creepy experience, remember that Tom Hanks is not considered to be much of a threat to one day eat your skin and enslave your children to labor in uranium mines.

And once you've shaken off the nasty thrill of the climbing bug-bot, check out this robotic pack mule, "affectionately" dubbed "Big Dog" by its irony-deficient creators. Click on the video to watch the Great Dane-sized Big Dog easily navigate on four legs over flat surfaces, mud, snow, gravel, schist, and hills of up to a 35% grade. Also watch for Big Dog to react quickly to retain its balance when kicked. Again, the thing reacts distressingly like an actual, living creature.

And although the Ministry is beginning to feel like the kids from South Park when, halfway through Season Three, they began reacting with boredom every time Kenny died ("uh, right. Oh my god. They killed Kenny. You bastards."), doesn't DARPA see the problem here? As with the million other distressing advances in autonomous robotitcs, we wonder: do they want humans to have no refuge where robots cannot get to them? Do they secretly wish to commit species suicide? Or do they simply think that humans will be in charge forever?

Inquiring minds want to know!

Last week it came to light that Yale had admitted a former quasi-ambassador of the Taliban. The Wall Street Journal was on it from the get-go, and new media outlets and bloggers are getting more heated about it. Jim Kouri at Sierra Times has a good summary of the issues and arguments at play here.

The chain of events seems to have gone that two apparently influential alumni talked a Dean into admitting the guy, despite his rather obvious connection to the Taliban, his lack of formal education, no visible means of support, and total unwillingness to divorce himself from Taliban-ic philosophy. A Yale rep later explained that they had already lost “one” (terrorist? jihadi?) to Harvard, and were eager to get one of their own.

We’ve all played the admissions game, and we’ve all lost it somewhere along the line. Aside from being the wrong race, and a veteran- already two tremendous hurdles to overcome- I always felt that I didn’t have the extracurriculars to really stand out in my applications. No captain of the football team, never started a homeless shelter, not once did I even help an old lady cross the street. Never in a million lifetimes though would I have thought that collapsing walls on homos and executing women for being slatternly would have put me on the fast track in the admissions office. Well it’s too late now.

What really got up my ass about it though was that he’s going for free. He must be. There is simply no way that this man has the economic resources to float any amount of time at Yale. Period. He’s not a citizen, so he isn’t borrowing from the gubmint; no Staffords for him, or Pells. I am highly skeptical that any private monies from a foundation or other grant-issuing organization would have anything to do with him. So there is no doubt that at least the huge majority of the cost of his attendance at Yale is being paid for by Yale.

But big privates like Yale get their money from private contributions, primarily from generous alumni giving. Shrewd investing of huge gifts grows the school’s endowment, which at the end of FY04 was closing in on $13 billion. That kind of bread means Yale can afford to put anyone it wants through for free, should the administration wish.

In essence, Yale’s own alumni are paying for this terrorist to go to Yale.

At this point in the discussion, it’s probably best to sit back and let things stew for a bit. Reflect on the links, the arguments, the themes and meta-themes at work, and then in a mellow and rational manner, quietly contemplate how best to exact vengeance.

Clinton Taylor at Townhall is on the right track, equating punishing the university with denying it donations. He recommends sending fake red fingernails to the Development Office, in recognition of the Taliban’s persecution of women who wore nail polish. The only very obvious problem is that he wants people to send these things to Development, which doesn't admit students. Admissions does. You’d be better off getting them to the President, or better yet, the Trustees, to send the message you want to send. And I can tell you what Yale is going to do about the uproar regarding this clown:

Nothing.

The university is sticking with its original story, that having an executive-level member of the most reprehensible government in recent memory attending is good. We can learn from him, you see. And the administration will wait for it to go away. Eventually attention will be diverted, things will calm down, and it’ll all be forgotten. The guy’s going to finish what he started, the Dean’s going to keep his job, no one’s going to look bad, and the world will continue to turn.

But Development is the right path to take to voice your displeasure. Fake nails aside, withholding donations is pretty much the only thing that gets a school’s attention in a serious and meaningful way. Money talks, people, and higher ed is a business. The problem with that tactic is that Yale is filthy stinking rich, and unless you’re prepared to mobilize thousands of wealthy alumni to withhold future giving, or renege on pledges already given, you’re not going to do much real damage.

But at the very least, by not giving your few dollars, you guarantee that no more of your own donations will go toward putting terrorists through your alma mater.

Legendary Malian guitarist Ali Farka Touré died this week in Mali after a long illness. His exact age is unknown; he was probably born in 1939. Best know in the USA for his 1994 album with Ry Cooder, Talking Timbuktu, he leaves behind a body of powerful and idiosyncratic recorded work that stands and some of the best that Africa has ever had to offer. Having achieved international fame in his 50s, he spent the last twenty or so years of his life as he spent this first fifty, as a farmer. The only difference being, from time to time he would step up to a microphone and record some of the finest, deepest, and most elemental guitar music ever made.

I have been fumbling with a proper obituary for the man for an hour now, and I can't seem to do him justice. Instead, I will quote from a short blogcritics piece I wrote in 2004 about Malian music that I feel captures what made Ali FarkaTouré special.

Ali Farka Touré himself is a farmer and local (what... chief? mayor? paterfamilias?), who tends to his village first and his music second. In 1995, he reputedly begged off a US tour claiming that he could not leave his home because if he did, he risked losing his land in an armed skirmish. When in 1998, one of his US labels, Hannibal, wanted to record a new record with him Touré insisted the producers bring a mobile recording rig to his compound at Niafunké. The stunning resulting album, aptly titled Niafunké, was recorded whenever farm chores did not press and whenever the mood struck to pick up his guitar.

In 2000, Touré decided to come to the USA for one last tour before devoting all his time to a village irrigation project. I was lucky enough to see his New York date, August 8, 2000, and I can't ever forget it. A big man in person, on stage he looked ten feet tall, wielding his electric guitar like it was a toy and wrenching from it some of the most searing melodies I have ever heard. He was playful, switching between guitar and njerka (a small one-stringed fiddle) and stopping to explain to the New York audience what he was singing about in the eleven languages he writes in. About halfway through the show, he struck on the game of lifting his leg way up in the air and bringing it down onto the stage with a huge *boom*. His band worked the *boom* into the deep percolating groove they had built, and soon Touré was *boom*ing away, each one accented by a chord from his guitar that sounded like trees breaking in the wind. The entire night was unforgettable and absolutely one of a kind. Ali Farka Touré is often compared to John Lee Hooker, whose elemental blues sound seemed to emanate from some half-remembered Mali of the mind, but on that night Ali Farka Touré sounded like Timbuktu.

Before the show, I shared a cab with record producer and Hannibal label owner Joe Boyd, who asked me about African music and what I thought about it. I mentioned Ali Farka Touré, Johnny Clegg, Fela Kuti and a few others before bringing up Angelique Kidjo, who had just released her pop-inflected album Oremi the previous year. Boyd looked at me quizzically and said, "you like that? That speaks to you?" I admitted that it didn't really, it just sounded nice, and he told me that someday, smart kid that I was, I would figure it out, I would get it.

Later that night, I got it.

I should also mention that on that same night, I met Mr. Touré briefly in his dressing room, where he took my stammered compliments with leonine reserve (I speak no French; he gave no indication whether English was among his many tongues). Up close, he seemed positively regal. It was not just that was a large man, but he radiated a genial calmness, a sense of presence, that made it seem that he was simply... in charge. When I saw him on stage seemingly shooting lightning from his fingertips or dancing with his one-string gourd fiddle, It was then that I got it. The god dances and we all must watch. That night was the best concert I have ever seen, or hope to see; it literally changed my life. And now, he's gone. And if his passing matters this much to me, who orbited him once for about forty-five seconds, in Mali it will surely be met with public fetes and much sorrow.

If you have not yet begun your collection of Ali Farka Touré recordings, I would recommend starting with Talking Timbuktu, which is in some ways his most accessible album. Made with Ry Cooder, it is a little less skeletal (and a little more Western) than much of Touré's other work, and is a good point of entry to his music and to Malian music in general. After that, you can take your pick of any one of a number of his records: I am partial to Niafunké and The Source, though many people swear by his self-titled debut on Mango, or Radio Mali, a collection of radio broadcast recordings. You should also check out his last album, 2005 Grammy winner for Best World Music Album, In The Heart of the Moon, which he recorded with Kora master Toumani Diabate. In something of a departure from his other albums, Touré gently winds circular rhythmic guitar lines around and underneath the ethereal waterfall plinking of Diabate's kora (a kind of many-stringed west African harp). Although it was never intended as one, it is a fitting capstone to the career of a giant of Malian music.

I've been on a sort of alternative country kick recently, having reviewed albums by Hank Williams III and bevy of outsider country icons in their younger days. And now comes a third approach to that hallowed genre in the form of Bloom, Red & The Ordinary Girl, an album by the alt-country sisterhood Tres Chicas. Tres Chicas, which started as a one-off project but is now a permanent concern, consists three friends from the Raleigh, North Carolina area: Lynn Blakey, who is a veteran of the great Southern indie music scene that gave us REM; Caitlin Cary, a founding member of Whiskeytown, which also gave us Ryan Adams; and Tonya Lamm, a member of the big-in-Europe indie-rock/folk/country band Hazeldine.

Bloom, Red & The Ordinary Girl (the title refers both to the Chicas' nicknames and to lyrics on the album) is a comfortable, completely unpretentious alternative country album of relaxed performances, gorgeous harmonies, and generally outstanding songwriting. Supported by crack playing from Matt Radford (upright bass) and Geraint Watkins (piano, organ) and team-produced by frequent Nick Lowe collaborators Neil Brockbank and Robert Trehern (who also features on drums), Tres Chicas sound like they're having a blast singing some lovely, aching songs that are reminiscent of Gram Parsons, the Jayhawks, Emmylou Harris, and the laid-back earthy earnestness of the Indigo Girls.

Musically, the album tends to stick to easy tempos and sparse arrangements organized around acoustic guitar, keyboards, and the Chicas' twining harmonies. Because of this, matters sometimes threaten to succumb to the dreaded mid-tempo syndrome. But although the dreaded mid-tempo syndrome has rendered hundreds of otherwise fine albums as sleep-inducing as a bathtub of warm syrup, on Bloom, Red & the Ordinary Girl the live-sounding, spacious production and gorgeous singing helps to make sure that mostly doesn't happen.

Tres Chicas' secret weapon, however, is definitely masterful songwriting. Each of the Chicas wrote songs for this album, and working together must surely have raised their game. There are so many styles, voices, and narrative devices here that it's possible to believe that they are the work of a dozen different writers.

Take "My Love," "Shade Trees in Bloom," and "Red," three selections from the middle of the album which also happen to be the sources of the album's title. I suspect each was written by a different Chica, because they are so distinct yet so absolutely in line with what Tres Chicas are about.

"My Love" is a gently swaying love song that paints in deft strokes a story of slightly distressing devotion with lines like "I'm not Jesus Christ, I'm just an ordinary girl/ and everywhere I go, you go/ Under high silver skies, you shelter me from rain/ you make it very plain you're mine, my love." Is this love actually shelter, or is it stifling and crippling? The song never quite decides.

Next is the quiet "Shade Trees in Bloom." In stark contrast to "My Love," this song's lyrics are plainer and more direct, almost sounding like the "straight from my heart" centerpiece of a lost Broadway hit, with stanzas like

All quiet now, just listening
Sometimes what you think is the end is the beginning
I'll put you to sleep but you keep laughing
Let's put our arms together, baby, we'll see what happens

On the chorus, one of the Chicas breaks out of the harmony to sing in ascending intervals "I want something beautiful, I want something good," a sentiment almost corny enough to roll your eyes to but redeemed by the performance. The song edges right up to maudlin without stepping over the edge.

Different again is the vituperative heartbreak of "Red," in which the three sing, "You have gone off to another, one who you think suits you better/ I don't wish you well, and I'll see you in hell/ And I'm sitting here burning your letters," like a young Elvis Costello circa All This Useless Beauty. Even though not every lyric on the album works perfectly, most artists don't show this much range in a career, much less in the span of three songs.

It is good that Cary, Lamm, and Blakey have decided to make Tres Chicas a permanent thing. They are talented songwriters, and Bloom, Red, & The Ordinary Girl is packed with fine writing that only rarely dips into anything resembling the standard folk/country coffeehouse confessional mode. Although some of the imagery is a bit overcooked, and a couple songs do melt into mid-tempo torpor, those aren't fatal flaws in an otherwise accomplished and thoughtful and... (pretty? that's condescending)... and, and... luminous batch of alt-country songs. All twelve songs together in a row can be a little too much to take, but my iTunes' shuffle function proves that on their own, each one is a gem. I'm not going to like this album in every mood, but it sure sounds nice right now.

It's probably a no-brainer that one of the first completely here, queer, and loving it punk bands was from San Francisco. When Pansy Division formed in 1991, they fused a Californian version of Ramones-ified power pop with a very clear love for British punk, especially The Buzzcocks, and topped it with lyrics that were, well, totally gay. Such a combination could easily run thin quickly. But whatever novelty potential the band had was quickly overshadowed by their songs, which treated the experience of being an out (and horny!) gay male in America with candor, humor, and sometimes brutal honesty. The lyrics to "Anthem," off their first album, served as a sort of mission statement:

We're here to tell you, ya better make way
We're queer rockers in your face today
We can't relate to Judy Garland
It's a new generation of music calling
We're the buttfuckers of rock and roll
We wanna sock it to your hole
With loud guitars, we're gay and proud
We gonna get ya with your pants down

Between 1993 and 1998, Pansy Division released six albums in this vein on the Lookout! label, albums that helped define that now legendary label's '90s-era sound. Like label-mates Green Day and Screeching Weasel, Pansy Division relied on fast tempos, trashy guitars, and a knack for big pop hooks tied to snotnosed lyrics. By 1994, the band was supporting Green Day on national tours, and became de facto poster children for the nascent queercore movement. They have since jumped to Jello Biafra's Alternative Tentacles label, where they released their seventh album in 2003.

The new Essential Pansy Division, out now on Alternative Tentacles, is a witty, thoughtful, and often profane thirty-song stroll through the band's career. The running order jumbles up songs from all seven of their studio albums, so that 1993's "Fem in a Black Leather Jacket" sits next to "Who Treats You Right" from 2003's Entertainment. I would like to kvetch, because I'm a kvetch and a pisher besides, that ordering the tracks in this way obscures the band's musical and conceptual growth, but that isn't really true. Like the Ramones before them, Pansy Division have not really changed their modus operandi in fifteen years, preferring to refine and embellish a winning formula.

Have they matured musically? Well, "He Whipped My Ass In Tennis (Then I Fucked His Ass In Bed)" is no more or less hooky than "Cocksucker Club," recorded a good dozen years before. Have they matured lyrically? Well, if you consider a song about circle jerking called "Alpine Skiing" an improvement over the older "Groovy Underwear," then sure. But what is really striking is that Pansy Division have been models of consistency throughout their career. Individual songs may be a little stronger or weaker, but they have found a winning formula that works for them, and it's a good one.

What makes Pansy Division more than just a very gay Barenaked Ladies, though, are the deep songs. Right in there with all the endless dicks (viz. "Dick of Death," "Touch My Joe Camel," "Horny In The Morning") are a few songs that hit with an ugly punch. "Denny" is about a porn actor from before the days when they knew about AIDS:

Denny picked me up, Denny did me
He's got a tattoo of his dick on his belly
It was double vision disorienting
Denny's kind of a dorky fella
Denny's dramatic, Denny's dark
He ain't nothing like the restaurant
He's got HIV+ tattooed in black
In 6 inch letters on his back
He said, "I want them to see
What they've done to me."

"Deep Water" is written from the point of view of some anonymous kid tortured with guilt and repression and waiting for the day he can leave home. "I Really Wanted You" is a bittersweet song about an old crush getting married (to a woman, presumably). On a lighter note, the jaunty "No Protection" is about shooting down a guy who wants to ride bareback, sung through a vocoder (like what Cher used on "I Believe") over a disco beat. Songs like these deepen and complicate the bouncy, happy sex romp that Pansy Division normally sings about, and coming as they do between songs about blowjobs, they pack surprising power.

In closing, I have to say that I am so used to hearing boy-meets-girl songs, hetero-themed get-it-on songs, and the like, that listening to thirty gay-themed punk songs in a row induces a little bit of vertigo. It's not just a simple matter of Pansy Division swapping out "dick" for "pussy" in their lyrics; the differences are deeper, fundamentally cultural. If you've ever spent more than a few days in England, you'll know what I mean when I say that it's the little things that are the most surprising. People look the other way before crossing the street. Bar etiquette is different. Standing in line is different. The money is funny colors. Every where you turn there's people speaking a language that you understand, but saying things that you have to think a little about to really comprehend.

Although my days of listening to Pansy Division albums ended about the time I graduated college and no longer had access to everyone in the dorm's record collection (ten frigging years ago!), which means I'm not completely up on what the kids are listening to these days, I can say for sure that The Essential Pansy Division is a well put together compilation, perfect for the gay nephew, homophobic uncle, or SoCal punk fan in your life. Also included is a DVD disc of live performances, TV appearances, and videos that, though inessential, do make this the only Pansy Division album you will ever need to buy.

I wrote recently about Hank Williams III's quest to rescue country music from a faded modernity of computerized backing tracks and lycra-clad artists and return it to the rough and real place it came from. But Hank Williams III's is only one interpretation of country history. Back in the mid 1970s, Austin and Nashville were home to a crop of young songwriters with rural roots and the heads of poets, songwriters who staged a quiet revolution against the cookie-cutter genteelness that was country's stock in trade at the time. Their names have gone on to renown in some circles: Rodney Crowell, Steve Earle, David Allan Coe, Townes Van Zandt, Gamble Rodgers, and John Hiatt, to name a few.

All these people are a little grey and a little grizzled now, and the sound they pioneered - the immediate predecessor to what we now call Alternative Country or Americana - has been around for so long it's hard to remember there was a time when it was brand new.

Fortuitously, film director James Szalapski was in Austin at the time and was moved to preserve this emergent alt-country scene in a 1976 documentary he called Heartworn Highways. This film has become over the years a cult classic, little seen but much revered, and it has now been cleaned up for a 30th anniversary DVD release by HackTone and Shout! Factory.

The labels have also put together a soundtrack to the film, a companion piece intended to build upon and embellish the documentary's musical narrative. Drawn from the original full session tapes, the soundtrack is a rambling 26-track compilation of intimate performances, entertainingly inebriated stage patter about whiskey and music, and some very good songs played by some very talented folks.

Of historical note is the fact that the album contains the very first recordings by alt-country icons Steve Earle, Rodney Crowell, and John Hiatt. If like me you only know these artists by their later work, Heartworn Highways is a bit of a revelation. Though a little rough and maybe a little less accomplished than their later stuff, the songs here belong unmistakably to their creators. John Hiatt's sharp lyrical poetry, Rodney Crowell's gift for atmosphere for melody, and Steve Earle's scrappy defiance (and leftism) are already in full view. But these treasures are only the smallest part of what makes Heartworn Highways worth a listen.

The song that kicks off Heartworn Highways, "L.A. Freeway" by the great and reclusive Guy Clark, sets the tone for the album. Clark's plaintive song conjures a laid-back atmosphere that, like most of the recordings here is Most of the tracks here are really intimate - living room intimate, front porch intimate. More than that, "L.A. Freeway" serves as sort of a mission statement for the album as a whole with its theme of leaving the urban life behind and getting back to one's roots.

The homey, homespun vibe continues straight through until the last notes of the closing song, a Christmas Eve jam on "Silent Night" with Clark, Steve Earle, Rodney Crowell, Steve Young, Susannah Clark (guy's wife), and Richard Dobson. Along the way, chairs creak, whiskey is sipped, audience members have important questions for whoever's singing, microphone stands make noise, and people come and go.

Guy Clarke contributes three other songs to the album, including an early version of his classic "Desperadoes Waiting For A Train," about "a man who was kinda like my grandfather, but was really my grandma's boyfriend." It is a perfect song about how this man helped raise him, with lyrics as sharp as a knife and scenes as sharply drawn as any ever have been, and it is made even stronger by the care the producers have put into sequencing the record. You see, just before "Desperadoes" is a wonderful David Allan Coe song called "I Still Sing The Old Songs" which closes with a few lines from "Red River Valley." "Desperadoes" opens with a mention of the same song. Rather than seeming gimmicky, touches like these elevate Heartworn Highways from a mere compilation to a statement about what country music meant to some of its future saviors.

It should be clear by now that I am not so much reviewing this album as falling in love with it. This was not a sure thing - I don't always have patience for confessional living-room singers and their confessional living-room songs. Performances like these live or die on the quality of the writing. But despite the fact that these are songwriters still learning their craft (Townes Van Zandt's "Waiting Around To Die" is actually, so he claims, the very first song he ever wrote), there really isn't a single dud, outright cliche, or bit of hokey filler here. And although the homespun authenticity of the whole thing sometimes feels a little studied, a little put-on, that's a minor sin to commit in the making of music this good. I could try to run down more highlights from this album, but the truth is, you're either going to dig all of it or none of it, and I wouldn't feel right choosing this Steve Earle song over that Townes Van Zandt when they are all pretty much gold.

If Hank Williams III's most recent album is his Moby Dick, a strenuous and difficult work about struggling with forces beyond his control, Heartworn Highways is more like Lake Wobegon Days, an intelligent, smart, and unpretentious album of people singing songs about living the way they want to, and what it means to them. Heaven and hell don't seem as close as friends, whiskey, and the velvet black of a Tennessee night, and all these geniuses love each other's company. It's just a little sad that all these artists who showed so much promise in 1976, who were kicking hard against the rigid conformity of Nashville's establishment, still remain marginal (if highly respected) figures in the scene they tried to topple. Still, whatever happened after, and whether or not their revolution succeeded and on what terms, Heartworn Highways is a fine chronicle of a great time in country music history.