Iraq has a government. Or not.
Author: Bryant
My friend Jere pointed out, quite accurately, that the question isn’t really “what did the kid in Kentucky write about?” The question is “when did we start arresting people for writing stories, no matter how disturbed?” Or, perhaps, “when did we stop trusting parents to raise kids and deal with problem situations?”
It’s probably relevant that the biggest policy victory (pending) for the Democrats over the last few years has been Social Security, on which issue they’re coming down on the side of the government protecting people. We really like being protected these days.
Remember the kid in Kentucky who got in trouble for writing a story about zombies taking over his high school? It’s more complicated than he claimed. According to local police, there weren’t any zombies in the stories, and there’s more to the case against him than just some fiction.
I did a little poking around to see if I could find anything out about this “No Limited Soldiers” gang. The only sign of it on Google is, um, a Command and Conquer clan. Their page seems to be down. I found their home page on archive.org, and whois data shows that the domain is registered to someone in the Netherlands, so probably no connection there.
In defense of something or other, the kid’s teachers still look like they’re overly nervous. They’re on record saying that “they had not assigned such a story or talked to him about it — and had they seen it, they would have been obligated to report him to authorities.” Zombies are scary. Overreaction to zombies makes me wonder if the police didn’t overreact to something else.
Or, hey, the kid could be a junior whacko who was thinking seriously about armed revolt. Hard to tell at this point.
Christopher Hitchens, of all people, has a good roundup of the Ohio voting machine irregularities. He’s such a contrarian.
The United Iraqi Alliance/Kurd talks are not going well. I’m saddened, if not surprised. While it’s certainly not unprecedented to have no clear winner a month after polls close, there’s no sign of the deadlock lifting. I suppose we’ll see what happens in three days.
For all the talk about how the Iraqi election was the first domino, and about how recent events in Syria and Egypt are more dominos falling, I can’t help but wonder if the dominos represent democracy. Populism? Almost definitely. The ability of the people to force regime change? Sure. Newly found bravado for Shiites throughout the Middle East? Hm.
There are pro-democracy protests in Lebanon, but right now, the Shiite protests are larger. It’s good that the Saudi government is loosening up, but it would be foolish to ignore the fact that protests in Saudi Arabia are likewise Shiite-driven.
We’ll find out, one way or another.
I had this entry going where I was trying to contextualize M.I.A. and talk about influences and stuff, but screw it, truth is I don’t know about about the British music scene to do that. So here’s a 17 meg QuickTime video. Square-wave synth beats — very video-game — with a melodic poppy rap going on over them, and a tribal chorus that takes over the song by the end. The imagery is pop violence; her father is (to some unspecified degree) connected with the Tamil Tigers. Careless appropriation of terrorism chic? Conscious rebranding? Damned if I know.
I sort of think conscious, though. The music’s too pop culture literate for this to be accidental. She name checks Jimi Hendrix and the Clash, and the whole thing is primitive sophisticate: raw talent filtered through limited resources. One Roland synth is all she needed, plus tri-continental influences and bam, there it is. There’s an interview somewhere, I can’t find it again, where she’s talking about her clothing and how in Sri Lanka people just make what they need. That seems to be to be both very true and a very conscious statement about her music slash image.
Insert obligatory Gibson reference here. Seriously, though, this is what he was talking about.
She has a Web site which is huge Flash that takes over your screen. But there’s more music there if you don’t feel like downloading 17 megs. Now, if only the big MP3 archive of her mixtape would come back…
Addendum: there’s a nifty Bollywood/Galang mashup here.
Everything old is new again, particularly my blog design. If you run into issues, drop me a comment or an email.
Sure, you can listen to a lot of interesting singles by way of MP3 blogs — but SXSW just published a BitTorrent torrent containing 2.6 gigs of music from bands which will be playing at this year’s SXSW. That’s 713 songs and almost two straight days of music.
Boston locals who want a copy of it without the 1+ day download period should get in touch with me.
If you are a mad Aimee Mann fan like myself, you will want to know two things: first, that she has made a concept album and it is available for pre-order beginning March 9th for delivery beginning May 3rd. March 9th is tomorrow, not today, no matter how often I check the date on my computer. Second, the first three songs on the album are available for streaming on her website.
“Dear John” is much like an Aimee Mann song, but it has more aggressive rock tendencies than most of her recent output. “King of the Jailhouse” is slower, near to lugubrious, very orchestrated. “Goodbye Caroline” is driven by a fairly meaty rhythm section, with drugs — and the guitar has a bit of fuzz to it, which is nice. I’m cautiously optimistic for the entire album, which is I suppose the intention of such a preview. I think she’s been in a bit of a rut lately, and I miss the sparse distortion of I’m With Stupid. The Forgotten Arm isn’t a return to that, but it’s also not placid. Is it May 3rd yet?
With the arrival of the Doctor Demento Show Archive, I can now point to show #91-19, from May 12th, 1991. The number one song on the Doctor Demento Funny Five that day was “Give Peaks A Chance,” from DJ Glazed Donut and The Knotted Cherry Stems. “Give Peaks A Chance” was on the Funny Five for four weeks straight, beginning the week after it was played for the first time. It was #12 on the year-end rankings.
This has meaning to me because I’m one of The Knotted Cherry Stems. The song was recorded back when I was living in Iowa City; a bunch of us were serious Twin Peaks fans, and were very unhappy about the show being cancelled. We all joined the Committee for Opposing the Offing of Peaks and made as much noise as we could. I dunno if we helped, but the show did get renewed for another season or so after all, which made us happy. Also, the show sent out Harry Goaz (Deputy Andy), Frank Silva (Killer Bob), and a publicist for a visit. In retrospect I notice that they didn’t send us any of the actual professional actors on the show, but both Harry and Frank were very cool and fun to talk to. I got to drive everyone around a lot.
You can retrieve an MP3 of show #91-19 here; our song starts about 6:15 into the MP3 of the show’s final segment. You’ll need to register to get download access. I’m part of the chorus, plus I also sing “James Hurley on his hog” in the third verse.