I’m blowing the dust off this blog for a few personal updates I’m sure the two of you reading will appreciate.
Transvaal IV For the first time in over a year and a half, I have new music to share. The new Transvaal IV EP, Vanden Aquitanias, is now available to stream and download for free via Virb.
This is the result of over two years of work and is pretty much the creme of the crop in terms of what I have produced (while there are only three songs on the 26 minute EP, there are another fifteen songs that were produced during those sessions). I do hope that you enjoy it (and comment on it!).
Twitter I’ve joined. Given the 160 character limit, I will update this much more than I will this (as it’s been proven time and time again that I can ramble without direction for hours).
Trailing Off…. Quite honestly I never update this anymore because I never have time to update. I try to take the time to craft something that’s informative, entertaining, and, most importantly, not a bore to read. (Sometimes I even succeed.) Unfortunately, doing that requires a lot of time I no longer have, so updates will be about as frequent as they are now (which is a nice way of saying “every three months or so”). If you wish to follow my exploits online and IRL, feel free to check out my profiles at del.icio.us and Twitter.
Thank you for giving a moment of your time to this loudmouth twenty-something, even if you found me via a Google search for something completely unrelated. I(‘ve) greatly appreciate(d) it.
Five of the seven men detained at Guantanamo Bay were ordered to be released today.
While you read this article, listen to Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” and see if you still believe those lyrics when you finish the article.
Truncated Version: A federal district judge, Richard Leon, today ordered the Bush administration “forthwith” to release five Algerian detainees who have been held in Guantanamo without charges since January, 2002 — almost seven full years. The decision was based on the court’s finding that there was no credible evidence that the 5 detainees intended to take up arms against the U.S. The court found sufficient evidence to justify the ongoing detention of a sixth Algerian detainee.
…
Here is a gut-wrenching account of what these detainees have endured. The Bosnian Prosecutor who investigated their initial detention back in 2001 (which was effectuated at the behest of the U.S.) concluded they ought to be released, but the Bosnian Government succumbed to the pressure of the Bush administration and turned them over to the U.S. as they were being released (“hooded, shackled, and packed into waiting cars while their horrified families watched”), after which they were shipped to Guantanamo.
One of the detainees ordered released today had a wife who was pregnant at the time he was shipped to Guantanamo, who then gave birth to a daughter, now 6, whom he has never met. Another of the Bosnian-Algerians had an infant daughter at the time he was put in Guantanamo who died last year of congenital heart disease at the age of 6. Another of them “suffered months of facial paralysis from a brutal beating inflicted by Guantanamo camp soldiers.” And then there’s this, about one of the other detainees, Saber Lahmer:
When we last saw Saber in November, he was in his sixth month of solitary confinement. Since August, he has seen us, his legal team, twice and a psychiatrist on three brief occasions. For a few minutes each day, he sees the camp guards who bring his meals. He has had no other human contact. The glaring lights in his cell are on 24 hours a day, seven days a week. When we left the cell, we could hear Saber shouting — brief, truncated cries. We could not understand what he was saying.
According to Human Rights Watch, that detainee — “a university-educated father of two who once taught at the Islamic Cultural Center in Bosnia” — “continues to be housed 22 hours a day in a single cell, with nothing to occupy his time other than his Koran” and “now reports that he is going blind in his left eye, a result that he attributes to being housed in cells with fluorescent lights on 24 hours a day.”
We haven’t just imprisoned people with no evidence in cages for years. We’ve kept them encaged under often brutal and extreme conditions, many in unbroken solitary confinement for years. Today, a federal court ruled that for 5 of these men, there is no credible evidence that they did anything wrong, and if most of our political class — which supported the Military Commissions Act– had its way, they wouldn’t have even had this hearing at all.
Strip Monopoly is nothing more than Parker Brothers Monopoly with the following rule changes implemented:
Instead of each play starting with $1500, the initial monetary disbursement is as follows:
each male player receives $650, and
each female player gets $500 (the reason for this will be clear soon).
Clothing can (and will) be used as legal tender at the following amounts:
underwear: $500
bras, brassieres: $300
pants, shorts, sweats: $200
shirts, tops: $200
socks: $ 50 each
shoes: $ 50 each
No other clothing is allowed to be used as legal tender. That means no hats, no jewelry, no watches, no tampons, no sunglasses, no jackets, nothing else.
Each player is allowed to start off with ONE item from each of the previously listed categories (but two socks, and two shoes), only female players are permitted to start with a bra or a brassiere. (Pants, shorts, and sweats is one category. )
How clothing is like cash: Clothes can be used to buy property, buy houses and hotels, pay debts, pay fines or anything that money can be used for.
How clothing is like property: Clothes can be sold at a higher than list price and/or auctioned off at any time that the rules allow a player to auction property.
When the bank processes clothing, any player can buy it from the bank at the price listed above. If more than one player wants it, the bank will auction them to the highest bidder.
Any player may wear any clothing he or she obtains in place of what he or she has lost (but try not to stretch other people’s belongings too badly). If you have someone else’s shirt but not your own, be nice and trade the shirt you have for your own shirt to avoid the stretching problem.
You’re not out of the game until you are out of money and clothing. This means that if you land on someone’s Boardwalk with a hotel and can’t afford to pay the rent, the owner can take everything you have but leave you with one dollar, to keep you in the game. This will also probably leave you quite embarrassed. This keeps people from copping out (although the true sissies will ditch on you anyway).
Senator Barack Obama will be, as of this November 5th at 12:05am, the 44th president of the United States of America.
The 2008 campaign season has been by far the most fascinating of any political race I have seen. Besides the staggering number of twists and turns this campaign has taken with regards to actions, speeches, and strategies of the candidates (that, were this a scripted drama, would put every writer to shame), there is one thing about the whole election that will forever stand out in my mind.
I remember hearing about Barack Obama in early 2007 at the very beginning of his campaign, and that it appeared that he had the overwhelming support of the youth vote. This may be blindingly obvious to all but the politically oblivious now, but at the time Obama first entered the presidential race this support was dismissed because “the youth don’t vote.”
At the time, this was true. I very clearly remember how apathetic most of my generation (much less the majority of the country) were to the political proceedings in 2004. Sure, there were people I knew who were infuriated over the events of the Iraq War, the actions of George Walker Bush, and the direction the country was going towards; I myself was one of them. However, as the re-election of G.W. Bush made abundantly clear, we were a minority.
Frankly, most people my age couldn’t, and didn’t, give a shit about these things.
It is said in the psychology of addiction that, in order for the addict to realize that they needed treatment, they needed to hit rock bottom and realize that they have hit rock bottom. While I won’t characterize the US in relation to its politics as a nation of addicts, I will say that this psychology is true with regards to people’s involvement.
In early September, the presidential race had played out like a network TV political dramedy. Sure, there were issues at stake; the Iraq War had turned into a disaster on par with the Vietnam War, energy costs were skyrocketing, and the national deficit was well into the trillions, but it hardly seemed to matter. With all of the media attention on the presidental race turning into an episode of This Is Your Life with Sarah Palin, it began seem like people were watching the election because the drama was more interesting than anything that could be found on network television.
Then the subprime mortgage crisis hit, and the financial sector melted down like Chernobyl.
We had hit rock bottom.
After that, everything, from the tone of the campaigns and the media coverage to people’s attitudes towards the election and its importance, changed. The election became more than a few men applying for a job in the federal government. From then on, it felt that this wasn’t simply business as usual, but that the outcome of this election would have a significant impact on the direction of this country.
And for the first time since the World Trade Center attacks in 2001, my generation, which had for years (been fairly accurately) described as too absorbed in blowing out their eardrums with iPods and texting on their Sidekicks to notice anything that they didn’t feel entitled to, began to become involved in something greater than themselves. Within a staggering amount of time, everyone I met under the age of 25 had not just their own opinions and perspectives on national politics and current events, but legitimate reasons for why they had their opinions, and that they intended not just to vote, but to vote early. While these opinions often varied wildly, there was one commonality amongst all of them:
We believed we could make a difference in determining what kind of world we wanted to live in.
This sentiment could not be articulated any more eloquently than it was by Barack Obama last night in Chicago in a speech that nearly led me to tears.
Regardless of whether Barack Obama’s presidency will be as seminal as Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s, as disappointing as Jimmy Carter’s, or as tragic as John F. Kennedy’s, November 4th, 2008 will forever remain significant.
On that night, my generation proved not only me, but to the rest of the country and the world, that we were not just a group of spoiled, self-absorbed, apathetic children, but that we could unite as one and make a difference in the world.
More than anything, knowing this is what gives me hope for the future.
As if I’m not already geeking out on this band already, the indefinitely-delayed remaster of their first album has leaked onto the interwebs. Normally I don’t care about remasters (“Buy the LOUDER version of an album you already own!”), but this sounds miles above the original.
Since these may never see the proper light of day (this is MBV after all) and I’m feeling giving tonight, check out the links in the comments.
(And before you start lecturing about how I should actually buy music, I do intend to purchase this when it’s released.)
Normally I don’t geek out over camera equipment (consider that of my dozen or so cameras, only one is digital and at least half of them are made of plastic), but this is worth mentioning because the apeture can open as wide as f/0.98.
For those of you not privy to camera jargon, it basically means you can shoot without a flash in candlelight
As of now, it’s the fastest consumer lens on the market.
So how much will this wonder cost when it’s released?
$11,260. And this doesn’t include the additional $5,000 for the Leica M8 body used in the promo photo above. I could sell my car and not even be halfway towards being able to afford that lens.
As of Monday, summer more or less ended for college students everywhere.
Except me apparently.
Due to some fuck-up in TCC’s financial records, I ended up owning $30 (without being notified) and my account for the school’s network (which I’m required to go through in order to register for classes) had been locked. By the time all of this had been worked out, all but one class I had intended to take (an evening photo class) had filled. On top of that, almost all of my friends that aren’t in college (that I would regularly hang out with until 4am) have gone to working obscenely early in the morning.
Basically while everyone is either at work or in class, I’m usually asleep. On the surface this would sound great, but when you consider that during the evenings I’m at work/class and nobody is available after 11pm, it makes for a rather solitary existence.
Some have said that this past summer felt like it could have lasted forever. They have no idea…
Launched in July 2008, the Amethyst Initiative is made up of chancellors and presidents of universities and colleges across the United States. These higher education leaders have signed their names to a public statement that the 21 year-old drinking age is not working, and, specifically, that it has created a culture of dangerous binge drinking on their campuses.
The Amethyst Initiative supports informed and unimpeded debate on the 21 year-old drinking age. Amethyst Initiative presidents and chancellors call upon elected officials to weigh all the consequences of current alcohol policies and to invite new ideas on how best to prepare young adults to make responsible decisions about alcohol use.
I disagree that this measure will change the drinking culture in America overnight (as the short-term change will merely be an increased number of alcohol-related traffic fatalities), but I do agree that there need to be changes in the drinking culture of this country.
