president of the united states. and with that lie begins the second term of a much needed abortion.

george w. bush has taught us a lot. you can be a failure and still get a good job. you can be a druggie and survive. you can be a drunkard and have people respect you. but most of all we learned that more than half of this country really has no clue. and theyre far more afraid than we thought.

dubya has taught us that logic has its time and place, and politics has no place for it.

dubya has taught us that honest communication, intelligence, integrity, morals, and responsibility really do take a back seat to money power and greed just like the smelly hippies told us at school.

in his first term we learned that yes you can go to war for false reasons, you can have a fucked up war, it can cost billions more than expected, it can cost far more lives than expected, and if the war was presented by the grand old party then everythings kool and the gang.

the hand goes up and waves before the eyes of all tomorrows parties and it whispers these are not the droids you are looking for.

im old but im young at heart. im old but my memory fails me. i dont remember a time when i have been more disappointed in my country than the day they reelected the biggest jackhole since pauly shore.

life isnt fair and then you die.

so you need to pay attention to how you lived.

did you live like a pussy ass bitch flinching at phantoms in the shadows

did you lie your way up the ladder and deceive the trusting and withhold from those who asked honest questions?

did you truly trust in the Lord or did you use His name in vain only to help make yourself look better?

did you own up to your failings, have a plan to do things differently next time, and work as a team, or did you exclude, attack, and blame?

theres a lot you can learn from a dummy.

make sure to take some notes.

splinky + bg5000 + highways west

Just thought I’d tell you about this philosophic debate I had the other week. Basically, I was having a conversation with a few people and told them that “blogging” is a new form of art. They seemed to have a hard time believing me, even though my argument basically went like this:

Before there was the technology of film, there could be no movies. Before there was the technology of television, there were no television shows. And so now we find ourselves with a new technology – the internet – and a new art form that has emerged with it. Now I’m not saying that all blogs are an art form. Information blogs, news blogs, blogs that are primarily used to talk about what mood you’re in and what you had for lunch, I do not consider those “art”. But I do realize I’m making the value judgement here about what constitutes art.

I believe writing is a form of art. I think that this was part of the problem with the people I was talking to. They couldn’t seem to grasp that art does not just have to be a sculpture or painting on the wall.

I believe that blogs such as yours and Raymi’s are art forms because they flow like poetic verse, each entry contributing to the larger mosaic. The photos, the non-book-like nature of them, is brand new to the media and artistic spectrum. As you’ve mentioned yourself, blogging should be raw, and posted with little regard for who will read it or even poor spelling. It was not possible to publish this way in the past, and so the art form has developed from the medium itself.

Yet as I mentioned before, by calling blogs like yours “art”, I’m resting on the assumption that you write in your blog with an audience presumably in mind, most notably, an audience that can speak English and understands something of Western culture. I personally believe that how we define art as a society hinges on who will be able to interpret it. For example, I might come across a copy of the greatest Japanese novel of all time, yet if I can not read Japanese, the book will be little more than symbols on a page. But I might look at the symbols and find them very beautiful, and take a page from the book and frame it and put it on my wall. Now it has become art, but not as the author intended. Society defines art, and the types of art that people produce depends on the society in which they produced it.

Anyway to make a long story short, I failed to convince this group of people that blogging is a new art form. I think I lost them when I said that there was a difference between what we define as “art” such as a painting on the wall, and what we define as “great art” like the Mona Lisa, or the music of Beethoven. I personally believe that the “aura” that exists around most famous pieces of art has more do to with it being famous than the quality of the art itself. After all, I’ve wandered around European museums and seen countless painting after painting, until finally you see the one that’s behind glass or in it’s own “special” room and you can almost feel the reverance in the air. This is not to shun the great works of art that actually are of fantastic technical or musical skill. I guess my greater point is that to the lay-person that knows nothing about art and the fine details of painting, they will look at the Mona Lisa and see a woman with a funny smile playing across her lips, and that would be all.

I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this when you get a chance.

Cheers,

Ian

let me on survivor dot com

bop raymi on the head, and drag her back here to hollywood. but im not the right man for her.

something tells me that shes not one of those girls who are all, hey lets see whats on tv tonight and veg out on the couch holding hands.

ice cube was on david letterman last night and paul and the band played the horn section from the courtroom intro of “gangsta gangsta” from straight outta compton and ice cube just smiled and pretended not to hear it

and i kept waiting for dave to say,

now, ice cube, dont you think its ironic that you were running around as Amerikkkas Most Wanted not that long ago and now you’re starring in a movie about a guy driving a car with a bunch of screaming kids in the back.

dont you think its weird that the Nigga Ya Love To Hate is wearing a red tshirt with the logo for the movie title on it, while on the david letterman show hyping a flick where you’re basically playing a Black clark griswold?

you, the brotha who wrote “no vaseline”

with a match and a little bit of gasoline.

but dave never asked anything like that.

ice cube just pretended that hes always been this laughing happy dad in the suburbs

and dave just pretended that ice cube is just this warm fuzzy dude

with no history

no ties to dr dre eazy e mc ren or yella.

didnt chant about being a gorrila in the mist.

doesnt have incredible clips of minister louis farrakhan on his solo records.

everyone was just smiling like soon the bags of money were going to be handed out to the man who acted the most clueless.

there was a time when mr david letterman

and mr ice cube had an edge.

this is not that time.

razyboy gives me props + run jen run + raymi

but im a bad example.

i drink, i smoke, i’m 111 and ive never owned a home and i currently dont own an automobile.

i dont proofread my shit, i watch a lot of tv, and on summer days in january i sit in my closet and write to you.

her name was geena she lives in a shoe. she has a beautiful young maid who comes by three times a week to make her meals and tidy up a bit because geena is in her early nineties.

my phone rings off the hook and sometimes i get upset but then i say well its better than having no one care about you and i grumble still, and i walk across the great hall to the dungeon and oh look theres the phone.

its geena, shes calling to ask me if i am single. she apologizes for such questions and she says you realize how old i am, obviously im not calling for myself, i just think youre a wonderful young man and even though shes married shes not technically married because he has a medical condition

if you can read between the lines.

and men are pigs. just understand that if you understand anything.

i thought how terrible that this nice woman, a maid for the elderly, works her tail off but then cant get any because of a curse thrown at her from a dark place

and what luck that she cleans my neighbors house.

me, king lover

possessor of maybe three candles, tops.

and i feel like i let the kids down because i didnt take her up on her roundabout offer because thats what bukowski would do.

thats what tommy lee would do.

thats what bill oreilly would do.

and today my annual visit to the hollywood celebrity orphanage was canceled as because it is 85 degrees and sunny this january afternoon, a generous donor bought the unfortunates tickets to disneyland, and so im off the hook until next year.

i mean, i dont get to see the little cutiepies for a while.

i dont know why more people dont adopt.

last night i watched american idol with rosalita who agreed with the crazy chick that mark mcgrath is hot.

i ripped off my pajama top and said fuckers got nothing on these 38 inch pythons.

which is true.

and my new printer is flashing red and green lights cuz its fucked up and broken even though its new, and there was a time when you could buy something, plug it in four months later and it would work.

but life isnt that simple all the time.

sometimes the angels want you to go outside and enjoy the nice things

and kickass on your second interview with the top secret nonprofit of love.

and my computer has viruses

cuz the bootleg firewall got eaten.

and i wanna say, just take what you want and leave.

and my question is, what ever happened to that idea where people wouldnt have hard drives at home, that all youd have at home was the controler box, and your harddrive would be on some secure box somewhere else, a maintained box, a clean machine and you would simply

trust

that everything was gonna be chill, cuz who really cares anyway.

and ive been eating pepperming patties like a fiend.

splink + lost in a lunchbox + mcbrown + starbody

palm reader says youre a libra on scorpio cusp
gemini rising
tony says youre a palm reader
your palm says see chart pick a card
one a hearts
dog barks someones at the door
kid opens, is ilka home
no
or do you want the bad news
gimme the good
youre capable of entirely anything
what about the bad
you said you only wanted the good
well now i want the bad
why
the little kids flipping past peoples court
news batman news news
turns off tv
slams nerfball
and right now youre in the middle of everything
but there are more paths than you think
show guts
and when you cant
pretend

they laid in bed.

it was dark

except for a few squares of

pearl blue

from the moon.

it had just snowed outside

but now it was too cold.

they were naked and warm beneath the sheets.

the heater had just clicked on again.

he thought she smelled nice

and he told her

quietly.

too .

what?

i said ilikedointhis

it was so quiet they could hear the neighbors wheels

as he drove behind the house

and the tires packed down the snow.

they were barely moving any more

and soon

they were asleep.

theres a dingdong at my doorbell

and an angel says its comin

browneyed handsome man from memphis

but a guitar he aint strumming

Love has seen his time get shortchanged

through the southside of chicago

so he came to california

and the cops beat up his brother.

and the tears they have stopped flowing

and the boy he has stopped growing

but his heart it cant help knowing

that the time it sure is coming.

MLK Day comes but once a year

and the angel says get ready

for the tables set and waiting

sure your legs they both are steady

i dont hump eight times a day, and when i do its slow and beautiful not manic and violent.

my neighbors dont complain any longer about noise or the mess cuz there isnt any.

the girls dont parade in and out, the randoms dont know where i live, the beer cans are no longer available for recycling outside my front porch.

i like warm oats in the mornings and long spa treatments in the eve.

im no longer reckless or trying to prove any points. i know where im perfect. i know they wont get it. i know what i need to know, and what i know is complete.

i know who are the liars the fakers the phonies and the sellouts.

and i know who are true at heart.

i have heard the most beautiful music there ever was.

ive seen the nakedest chicks

and ive tasted from the fountains of youth.

my cup hath runneth over in so many ways in so many areas that in order to deal with it, i often dumb myself down through tedium and alcohol. and then i watch television.

yes, im olde.

im so old i remember when there wasnt anything on tv.

i remember when there wasnt anything on the radio either.

we watched static on tv and we listened to morse code on the radio.

kids today have no imaginations. i blame hdtv.

in the old days, girls didnt just find your blog and send you nudes to your gmail, no you had to go out and club em and pull em back to your trailer by their hair.

one thing about those days though

there was something happening in music, especially in los angeles, that was amazing.

and strangely it was also happening, in a slightly different way in the twin cities of minneapolis – st.paul.

at the same time that prince was ruling the pop charts, other minnesota bands were laying down the foundations of what would a decade later be called grunge.

soul asylum, husker du, the jayhawks, and the mekons, would all have a home on the local twin/tone record label, but it was the Replacements that mattered the most.

verbungle today leads us to the now-defunct twin/tone webpage which provides us with a glimpse at the best band in america, as rolling stone magazine called them, way back when.

the replacements rocked that night at the famous First Ave., which most of you know from Prince’s film “Purple Rain.”

the mats that night were young, serious, as tight as theyd ever get, and decidedly sober. the year was 1981. ashley wasnt even born yet.

on bass you had tommy stinson who is currently axl rose’s bass player,

chris mars on drums

the dearly departed bob stinson on lead guitar

and the mighty paul westerberg on vox

and gibson sg.

im so old i remember rock music.

with simple lyrics for simple people.

“i hate music, its got too many notes”

im so old im being asked to adjurn to the hot tub.

ta.

the replacements live, 1981, quicktime required + metafilter + katie

the five people you get jiggy with in heaven