It took me a while before I could tell—even in a general sense—exactly what the fuck this angry, angry man was going on about and by the end I still wasn’t sure. One thing that’s for certain is he is really, really angry. Spitting mad, you might say. Bring an umbrella.
Thank you Redacted!
Once again, Matt Taibi shows why he is, beyond all doubt or argument to the contrary, the best writer in America today, as he describes, with surgical precision, his Tea-party “epiphany.” What more can I add to the perfect prose contained in the following six paragraphs?
It’s taken three trips to Kentucky, but I’m finally getting my Tea Party epiphany exactly where you’d expect: at a Sarah Palin rally. The red-hot mama of American exceptionalism has flown in to speak at something called the National Quartet Convention in Louisville, a gospel-music hoedown in a giant convention center filled with thousands of elderly white Southerners. Palin — who earlier this morning held a closed-door fundraiser for Rand Paul, the Tea Party champion running for the U.S. Senate — is railing against a GOP establishment that has just seen Tea Partiers oust entrenched Republican hacks in Delaware and New York. The dingbat revolution, it seems, is nigh.
“We’re shaking up the good ol’ boys,” Palin chortles, to the best applause her aging crowd can muster. She then issues an oft-repeated warning (her speeches are usually a tired succession of half-coherent one-liners dumped on ravenous audiences like chum to sharks) to Republican insiders who underestimated the power of the Tea Party Death Star. “Buck up,” she says, “or stay in the truck.”
Stay in what truck? I wonder. What the hell does that even mean?
Scanning the thousands of hopped-up faces in the crowd, I am immediately struck by two things. One is that there isn’t a single black person here. The other is the truly awesome quantity of medical hardware: Seemingly every third person in the place is sucking oxygen from a tank or propping their giant atrophied glutes on motorized wheelchair-scooters. As Palin launches into her Ronald Reagan impression — “Government’s not the solution! Government’s the problem!” — the person sitting next to me leans over and explains.
“The scooters are because of Medicare,” he whispers helpfully. “They have these commercials down here: ‘You won’t even have to pay for your scooter! Medicare will pay!’ Practically everyone in Kentucky has one.”
A hall full of elderly white people in Medicare-paid scooters, railing against government spending and imagining themselves revolutionaries as they cheer on the vice-presidential puppet hand-picked by the GOP establishment. If there exists a better snapshot of everything the Tea Party represents, I can’t imagine it.
Tea & Crackers: How corporate interests and Republican insiders built the Tea Party monster (Rolling Stone)
Carrot ejaculating from ‘Sixteen Studies from Vegetable Locomotion’ (with Marion Faller) (1975)
There’s more wacky GIF images from Hollis Frampton and Marion Faller’s ‘Sixteen Studies from Vegetable Locomotion’ that can be found here.
(via Everlasting Blort)
Fuck me:
A wonderful book of The Tea Party for Kids! Teaches children (and parents) about the origins of the Tea Party and what it involves. A very pleasant song, coloring and activity book on Liberty, Faith, Freedom and so much more! Get involved, participate, self reliance, freedom of choice, work, government-of-for-by the people, Leadership, Ingenuity, Jobs and responsibilty!
The Tea Party Coloring Book for Kids!
Here’s a fun look at the history of computer graphics from an early ‘70s perspective. I’m sorta digging the music and the “futuristic” trippy designs. Enjoy!
(via HYST)
At one point, frankly, to actually own a replica of the Batmobile would have been my #1 goal in my life. Of course I was 9-years-old then, but knowing that this is out there, gives me a reason to keep living.
Gizmodo lays out the details of the officially licensed (from DC Comics) replica Batmobiles from Fiberglass Freaks:
• Rocket exhaust flamethrower works (YES!)
• Show-car quality paint job.
• Car sports Radir wheels with accurately shaped bat spinners.
• Brand new GM 350 crate engine and brand new transmission.
• Center console aluminum trim
• Five light flasher, steering bezel, door sill chevron plates, “chrome-painted seat buckets, and even the very knobs, buttons and T handles are molded from vintage equipment.”
• Five highly-polished aluminum roll top dashboard doors that glide open.
• Red beacon light.
• Batbeam antenna grid raises between the front windshields.
• Detect-a-scope radar screen glows green.
• DVD player that plays on the LCD screen in the dash.
• Hood and trunk raise and lower with actuator switches.
• High-end stereo to play back the original Batman theme or the Prince one.
I’m sure $150,000 is a bargain when it comes to a loaded bespoke superhero car, but you would have to be Bruce Wayne to afford this sucker. Oh well, I can dream.
(On another note, this hopped-up hotrod isn’t exactly a “babe magnet”, now, is it?!?!)
Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. Here’s the late, great Joey Ramone doing a smashing job of singing the beautiful early John Cage piece The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs which is itself based on text by James Joyce. This comes from an Italian Cage tribute LP from the early 90’s that I was previously unaware of which also features a ton of other luminaries such as DM super-pal Ann Magnuson, David Byrne, Debbie Harry, John Zorn, etc.
Hear Robert Wyatt and Cathy Berberian’s versions of the same song after the jump…
Dangerous Minds pal Adam Parfrey’s new publication of “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto, now titled Technological Slavery: The Collected Writings of Theodore J. Kaczynski, was written up in the Peninsula Daily News, a media outlet servicing the area of Port Townsend, WA—where Adam lives—this morning:
The Unabomber—who argued that technology is at fault for society’s current problems and pockmarked his argument with bombings for nearly two decades—has published a book through a small Port Townsend publisher.
But his publisher is short of the accolades book publishers usually place on their authors.
“He is a murderer, and he is a sociopath,” said Adam Parfrey, who published Technological Slavery by the now-imprisoned Theodore J. Kaczynski.
But Parfrey said in an interview Monday that Kaczynski “is also provocative and intelligent.
“He is a genius and a very good writer who can add to the discussion about technology,” said Parfrey.
Kaczynski, 68, sent 16 package bombs between 1978 and 1995 which exploded, killing three people and injuring 23.
He blackmailed The New York Times and The Washington Post into publishing his manifesto in 1995, saying that he would continue his bombings unless the papers ran the document.
After publication, Kaczynski’s brother recognized the writing style and made the identification that led to an arrest in a Montana cabin in 1996.
Technological Slavery is a reworked version of the original manifesto that includes Kaczynski’s other writings that have been edited only slightly, according to Parfrey.
Prior to publication Kaczynski, Parfrey and a University of Michigan professor corresponded frequently, and the author—serving a life sentence in a federal maximum-security prison in Colorado—provided strict instructions to his publisher.
“He had some very strong ideas about how he wanted the book to look,” Parfrey said.
“He did not want to have any typos, which were present in the last edition of the book.”
Below, a segment from ABC’s Nightline, when Ted Kaczynski was taken into custody, 1996:
Read more of Unabomber’s book finds publisher in Port Townsend (Peninsula News)
Surreal self-help guru Paul Crik’s been killin’ it lately with his basically nonsensical New Agey affirmations taking the online world by storm. This weekend, “Killin’ It with Paul Crik” was Johnny Dee’s top Internet pick of the week at the Guardian:
Killin’ It, in the words of internet philosopher Paul Crik, is “the soughtafter peaceful union of the free individual with functioning society” or perhaps “spiritual fullness unfettered by the reigns of institutionalism”. It is also Roger Federer’s audacious between-his-legs shot at the US Open or the woman who grew her fingertip back. Delivered in a series of blog entries and short YouTube clips, Crik may be taking a comedic swipe at America’s self-help industry, but he’s still full of life-enhancing brainhacks. Any situation, he says, can be faced by remembering three key phrases: “this is it”, “fuck it” and “it is what it is”; oh, and it’s important that you have all three phrases “in your heart”. Elsewhere he’s a bit more blatant, encouraging swearing at babies and comparing Koran-burning pastor Terry Jones to Yosemite Sam. Just by visiting this website you will, in fact, be killin’ it.
Agreed! Here’s his latest, a meditation on passive-aggressive behavior wherein Paul takes a deeper look at himself:
This is infuriating, I warn you: Watch in horror as Anderson Cooper takes this Islamaphobic hillbilly—her name is Renee Ellmers and she is running for Congress on the Republican ticket in North Carolina—to task over her incendiary political ad. At about 4:45 seconds in he just can’t take it anymore. It gets more painful from there.
Ellmers claims that the people in her district are “very concerned” about the “Muslim victory mosque” being built on “hallowed ground” and all that Republican talking points bullshit. I’d imagine that many, if not MOST of the people living in her district, care much more about unemployment, the economy, taxes, keeping a roof over their heads, insurance premiums, underwater mortgages, elder care costs, roads, and many other matters, than they do about an Islamic cultural center being built in a former Burlington Coat Factory store that is two *New York City* blocks away from the site of the former World Trade Center (and down the street from popular topless bar, New York Dolls). Even Fox News has gone cold on the “Ground Zero Mosque” bullshit, but this dumbass thinks beating this dead horse is going to get her elected?
Clearly, Renee Ellmers doesn’t know anything about.. anything as she cheerfully admits over and over and over again. Like Michele Bachmann, Rand Paul, Sarah Palin, Christine O’Donnell, Ted Miller and Sharron Angle, this woman takes SMUG PRIDE IN HER OWN IGNORANCE. The Republicans in NC’s District 2 could not find anyone—not one single person with an IQ higher than a bag of wet hair—to run instead of this ignoramus? Obviously not!
THIS IS WHAT AMERICA IS BECOMING. BE AFRAID. BE VERY, VERY AFRAID.