Speaking Truthiness to Power

Crooks and Liars has a clip of part of Stephen Colbert's appearance at the White House Correspondents dinner. Brilliant.

Not a lot of laughter—he cut to the bone and then kept going.

Editor & Publisher reports: "As Colbert walked from the podium, when it was over, the president and First Lady gave him quick nods, unsmiling, and left immediately."

Buffy Wisdom Monday (Now on Tuesday!)

PRINCIPAL WOOD: Buffy tells me you have been, um...oh, how shall I put it...experimenting. With the magicks.

WILLOW: (laughs nervously) Oh! Yeah. Oh, nothing too heavy, though. Just the lighter, safer stuff. Uh, if Kennedy asks, her pointy stuff's right there. See you inside. (to Buffy) So much cooler than Snyder. (exits)

PRINCIPAL WOOD: She really almost destroyed the world?

BUFFY: Yep.

PRINCIPAL WOOD: Remind me not to make her crabby.

"Get It Done," Season 7

"I Made My Bed and I Sleep Like a Baby"

Listen here to the Dixie Chicks' "Not Ready to Make Nice," a melodious and soulful middle finger to their pro-Bush critics.

What Would Easter Be

...without Peeps and liquid nitrogen and the folks at Peep Research?

And remember:

The synergistic effect of smoking and alcohol in Peeps produces a rapidly exothermic oxidation reaction, leading to a chemical and morphological divergence from the wild-type Peep phenotypes.

What Christianity Could Be

I'm not a Christian anymore. I spend much more time with the Gospel of Thomas than I do with the canonical gospels.

But I found this recent Radio Open Source program (streaming audio) with Garry Wills to be very interesting.

It reminded me of the challenging—and radical (radical from radix or root)—Christianity I found in the life of Rev. Jon Nelson and in the writings of John Yoder (The Politics of Jesus) in the '80s. We could do with much more of that Christianity and much less of the Nationalism wrapped in the Cross that passes for Jesus these days.

Some things to think about while washing the chocolate bunnies down with peeps.

Helping Hands

I must be in a worse mood than I thought because the following struck me as very funny (and true!):

Give a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day.
Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

Feet of Clay

Or jackboots.

Looking at some of Andres Segovia's recording and concert dates, I finally realized that he was of the generation of Spaniards who lived through the Spanish Civil War.

Several online biographies (actually, what looked like multiple copies of the same one) refer euphemistically to his house being vandalized. This lecture on the guitar repertoire (interesting in and of itself) cuts through the crap:

Some years ago I published the full text of 129 letters written by Segovia to the Mexican composer Manuel Ponce from their first acquaintance in nineteen twenty three, until Ponce’s death in nineteen forty eight. These letters, a personal testimony, portray a totally different image of Segovia than that which we knew before. Segovia was a right-wing reactionary who actively supported the Franco side in the Spanish civil war. The real truth about Segovia’s eviction from Barcelona in the middle of the War, as Segovia himself tells it, is that he was chased out by the left-wing loyalists, and not by the fascists, since he himself was a sworn sympathizer of the fascist forces. Segovia was a self-declared anti-semite, and this, together with his political connections to Franco, assured that he would be banned from performance in the United States from nineteen thirty seven until after the Second World War, when the old grievances of the American public against him were forgotten.

Andres Segovia: Jew-hater and Fascist. Yet another reminder from a generation filled with such reminders (Eliot, Pound, Heidegger) that the aesthetic is distinct from the ethical.

I don't think I'll ever be able to listen to Segovia the same way. And it makes that last year of high school, listening to that old Decca vinyl recording of him, wanting to play like him, and riding the waves of music with the excesses of adolescent emotion—well, it feels like being intimate with a rat, now.

Buffy Wisdom Monday

BUFFY: I better stop him before he gets in trouble.
WILLOW: I got it. The non-violent approach is probably better here.
BUFFY: I wasn't gonna use violence. I don't always use violence. Do I?
XANDER: The important thing is you believe that.

Season 2, "Inca Mummy Girl."

Sing Along with the Clash

...and you get questioned as a terrorism suspect.

Herewith the lyrics to "London Calling":

London calling to the faraway towns
Now that war is declared—and battle come down
London calling to the underworld
Come out of the cupboard, all you boys and girls
London calling, now don't look at us
All that phoney Beatlemania has bitten the dust
London calling, see we ain't got no swing
'Cept for the ring of that truncheon thing

CHORUS
The ice age is coming, the sun is zooming in
Engines stop running and the wheat is growing thin
A nuclear error, but I have no fear
London is drowning—and I live by the river

London calling to the imitation zone
Forget it, brother, an' go it alone
London calling upon the zombies of death
Quit holding out-and draw another breath
London calling—and I don't wanna shout
But when we were talking—I saw you nodding out
London calling, see we ain't got no highs
Except for that one with the yellowy eyes

CHORUS

INSTRUMENTAL BRIDGE

CHORUS

Now get this
London calling, yeah, I was there, too
An' you know what they said? Well, some of it was true!
London calling at the top of the dial
After all this, won't you give me a smile?

I never felt so much a' like

UPDATE: Listen to it here.

Offensive Weapon?

I've never thought of a saddle stapler as an offensive weapon (OK, that's not entirely true), but this could turn it into one.

Samizdat, anyone?

Buffy Wisdom Monday

BUFFY: (seeing Morgan and his dummy) Ewww, dummy!
XANDER: (sees a mime and jumps in his seat) Dyow! Mime!
WILLOW: I think dummies are cute. You don't?
BUFFY: Uuuhhh. They give me the wig. Ever since I was little.
WILLOW: What happened?
BUFFY: I saw a dummy. It gave me the wig. There really wasn't a story there.

Season 1, "The Puppet Show."