Today, Apple announced its newest iPhone, the “3GS” version. Basically, it’s the same, except with double the storage, and it can shoot video (not just stills).

Can you tell the difference? Then why be embarrased if yours is the "old" one?

Of course, everyone just HAS to have one. It’s going to be the same price as the current “3G,” which was $199. But since it doesn’t come out until July 17, that means a dismal week or two of iPhone sales leading up to the date.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I’ve been blessed with a brand-new job that’s going to be starting in just a few weeks. So today, I got a sort-of “congratulations” treat, so to speak: the OLD iPhone.

My friend Greg has already excoriated me: You dummy! Why would you do that? Do you watch the news??? Thing is, I honestly never thought too much about having one. Sure, I wanted one, but didn’t really have the need. (And, honestly, does anyone really NEED such a thing?) But circumstances have changed, and so now I have the iPhone. The “3G” one, not the “3GS” one.

It cost, by the way, just $99 — a $100 price drop, today, as the new “3GS” was announced. In other words, I just got a really cool phone/gadget/thing, something far more advanced than the Sony Walkman phone I have been using, and it cost $100 less than it would have had I gotten it yesterday.

So, no. Come July 17, I won’t be drooling over your new iPhone, the one that shoots video and has twice as much space and comes with a built-in compass (I didn’t go camping pre-iPhone, I’m sure not going now). I’ll be perfectly happy with my old iPhone — because it’s incredibly new to me.

THOUGHT 1: Blogging is light, and I’m not even apologetic this time. I’ve rediscovered working in — as opposed to simply owning — a coffeeshop, and while I miss my time at home with Shelley and the kiddos, I’m doing my best to enjoy a few things I’ve missed:

• Wonderfully made coffee within arm’s reach at all times
• Random conversations with people I don’t know
• Listening to “Hot Rail” by Calexico
• Time to blog, if only for a few minutes
• Standing for hours at a time

Most curses are also blessings, I think, and so I’ve no reason to lament my increasingly busy lifestyle… in the midst of all this busyness, I may actually relearn how to relax.

THOUGHT 2: I’ve long said “I agree with conservatives in principle,” and then voted for liberals… Hell, I may still do that. But for everything I liked and still like about Obama — his eloquence, his thoughtfulness, his (seeming) candor — I’m convinced that this “stimulus” idea simply isn’t going to work. My friends who also voted for Obama will here object: “Give the man a chance!” And I am, and shall, and don’t walk around dwelling on the state of things or looking anew for the next great white hope. But it simply doesn’t make sense.

As I mentioned in a pretty recent post, throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at people so they can get their network TV shows and Viagra ads doesn’t seem like a good way to spend tax money (I’ll have a lot to say in coming weeks about tax money). Neither, thinks I, does just spending money on something, anything, make for sound economic policy. Debt got us into this mess — why do we think further debt will get us out? As C.S. Lewis said, it’s telling that we’ve essentially crafted our society around lending w/ interest — the one and only economic policy that God specifically forbade the Israelites from taking part in.

THOUGHT 3 (is related to Thought 2): Larison is always a good read, especially in these Dem-majority times. But he’s outdone himself, tossing out what he may think is a throwaway line that (if only more people read him) should make it into Bartlett’s:

(O)ptimism permits the perpetual deferral of hard choices.

This is the wisest single sentence I’ve read in a long time, and particularly convicting in an age of “hope.” As a spiritual person, I generally aim for optimism. And there’s nothing wrong with optimism, I suppose, when one is speaking in a spiritual sense and of something that’s both realistic and relatively certain. But this refrain of “Americans have come back before, we’ll do it again!” takes all the oomph out of this economic punch to the gut. “Don’t worry, it’ll all be better” is a great message for a 2-year-old who fell and hit his head; it’s at once  condescending and stupid when used on grown men and women who should know better.

THOUGHT 4: My friend Greg has started blogging one idea per day, as well as one haiku per day. I found this one particularly apt (though be warned, it takes a few readings to grasp the meaning):

This sleep that thought thieves
in the new morning will seem
pricey. The thoughts, cheap.

Beautiful.

"What will I do if I can't watch this excitement from the comfort of my own home?" (Photo by Richard Drew/AP)

I just read that Obama — or, more accurately, his transition helper John Podesta — wants the digital TV conversion pushed back from its Feb. 17 start date.

This seems dumb to me for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that most every station has already made the transition… here in southcentral Kentucky (hardly the most advanced area of the nation), two of the three stations transmitting have already stopped sending out analog signals. But there’s a deeper reason that I think this “delay the transition” talk is counterproductive.

Podesta says:

The program to provide consumers with a coupon to defray the cost of the digital-to-analog converter necessary to analog TV’s to continue to work has run out of funds … As of today, over 1 million coupon requests sit on the wait list, unable to be fulfilled by the Department of Commerce. By early February, projections suggest that number could climb to over 5 million… With coupons insufficient, and the most vulnerable Americans exposed, I urge you to consider a change to the legislatively mandated analog change. [bold mine–R]

The most vulnerable Americans? Is this what we’ve come to, that one of our primary concerns in a faltering economy is to make sure “vulnerable” Americans have access to Dr. Phil and Grey’s Anatomy?

That our government — even in the so-called “conservative” phase when this transition idea was mandated in 2005 — thinks it needs to subsidize people’s ability to get a TV signal is absurd in decent economic times; I, for one, can think of a lot better ways for Uncle Sam to spend his cash than helping people buy converters for their extremely old TV sets.

Think about what this means, in practical terms: Taxpayers are being put into further debt so they can keep their access to network television. Network television that, while supposedly “public,” is almost one-third advertisement. Advertisement for Snuggies and foreign cars and newfangled mops and a million other things the viewer a.) doesn’t need and b.) CAN’T AFFORD. Oh, and there are ads, too, for credit cards and reverse mortgages and “low” financing — it’s a near-constant refrain to the already poorer-than-before taxpayer (whose tax money is itself simply paying off the interest on a huge national debt) to go spend money he doesn’t have on things he doesn’t need. He is not just tempted, he is literally seduced by these ads… don’t lie, you are constantly coming up with reasons the purchase of that on-sale flat panel TV makes more sense than ever.

If one wants to explore some of the factors behind our nation’s debt and a failing economy spurred by the housing bubble, she only needs to look at the way our leaders and representatives intend to help the “vulnerable” among us.

I really have to apologize — mostly, perhaps, to myself — for being such a slacker on the blog front in recent weeks. There are lots of reasons, but it still pains me to suddenly realize I haven’t written in a week, and that I have nothing substantial to add to anyone’s discussion. 

That hasn’t changed today. But, in lieu of actual thought, I’d like to give you a few glimpses at the things that are making me tick right now.

A Palestinian man wails over the dead body of a Hamas security officer Saturday. (This is the version we ran in the paper, CLICK for the uncropped, much more gruesome version.)

1.) Pictures of dead people. That sounds weird, I’m sure. But today’s Israeli attack on Hamas — the bloodiest single event in decades of the conflict — has me thinking about fallen man in fallen world; and how in the world we, America, can presume to know anything about these people in a land far, far away; and how thankful I am to live in such a peaceful place; and how spoiled I am to live a life so detached from the real struggles being dealt with by most of the rest of the world.

(more…)

I’ve just hauled my first load of slaves. Made $171,000 on the deal. Seriously, this is a darkly comic yet sobering look at part of our nation’s history. Click the pic to play for yourself.

In this season of electionmania, my media outlet of choice (besides AP, which I have instant, no-limits access to 24/7) has been MSNBC. Not because of its ideology (which seems to be anti-Hillary, oddly enough) but because of one man:

Pat Buchanan.

Yes, THAT Pat Buchanan. The one who made waves in the 80s with his fundamentalist firebrand style, who tried to wrest the nomination from George H.W. Bush, who has traditionally been used as one of a few straw horses for moderates and liberals looking to paint a black-and-white picture of cultural conservativism.

So why Pat? Because he’s smart, funny, and brings up all kinds of issues the other commentators haven’t even thought of. Still, it’s been a distant kind of love: An admiration for the man’s word, but with a skeptical eye turned toward the man himself.

Then I read this, and all the skepticism washed away.

During his speech to CPAC, among the best he has delivered, Mitt Romney suspended his campaign, so as not to imperil GOP prospects in the fall. Said Mitt,

“If I fight on…all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Sens. Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.”

Thus did Romney endorse the McCain view that the Democrats who intend to pull all U.S. combat brigades out by a date certain, are raising the “white flag of surrender” to Islamofascist terror.

But when Mike Huckabee, who also delivered one of his best at CPAC, was asked if he would stand down for the good of the party, as his winning the nomination is now a near-mathematical impossibility, he brusquely dismissed such demands as “total nonsense.”

“I didn’t major in math,” said the Baptist preacher, “I majored in miracles.” Good for Huck. Why should he drop out?

For too long conservatives have suppressed their convictions or meekly submitted, so as not to oppose a Republican President or get out of step with the Congressional leadership.

Because they did not wish to undercut George H. W. Bush, too many went along with his tax hikes and quota bill. And they paid the price in 1992.

Because they did not want to get out of step with their K Street contributors, too many went along with the refusal of Bush I and Bush II to secure America’s borders. Belatedly, they have awakened to what “going along” has done to their country.

Because they did not want to get out of step with Newt and Dole, too many conservatives went along with NAFTA, Most Favored Nation trade status for China, the surrender of sovereignty to the WTO.

Result: $800 billion trade deficits, de-industrialization of the nation, and a dependency on foreigners for the necessities of our national life and for the borrowed money to pay for them.

Now they all wonder why manufacturing jobs are leaving for China, why median family income no longer rises as in the Reagan era, why the Reagan Democrats are going home.

Because too many did not want to be seen as not supporting a Republican president in time of war, only six House Republicans voted to deny Bush a blank check for war.

Did the rest have no grave concern about the wisdom of invading Mesopotamia to dethrone a tyrant and democratize a nation that has never known democracy, when George H. W. Bush himself, wiser than his son, halted the Army of Desert Storm rather than take Baghdad?

Because Bush demanded it, too many conservatives went along with No Child Left Behind, Medicare funding of prescription drugs, and the largest increases in social spending since LBJ. And what did their capitulation to Big Government Conservatism do for them, except earn them the contempt of the base, which they manifestly deserved.

Thinking is hard work, said Twain; that is why so few engage in it. For too long, conservatives have not been thinking, but living on the inherited intellectual capital of the past. They have failed to see that the world has changed since Reagan’s time and we must change with it.

The truth is the prospective Republican nominee is frozen in the past. Though an invasion of his nation is taking place on the border of his own state, John McCain is still reciting Emma Lazarus on the Golden Door. Though China manipulated its currency to seize our markets and loot our industry, and the EU imposes VAT taxes — tariff equivalents — on U.S. imports, McCain is still babbling on about Smoot-Hawley.

Though the Cold War has been over a generation, McCain has become more bellicose. He warns us new wars are coming, demands the ouster of Putin from the G-8, threatens Iran. If there is a single trip wire for war laid down in the time of Acheson and Dulles that John McCain thinks we should pull up, or a single alliance he has urged us to review, this writer has not heard of it.

With the president at 30% and the party about to lose seats in both houses, conservatives should not be closing ranks but demanding to know why.

Huckabee has a chance to do himself a world of good by piling up votes and delegates and making himself a conservative alternative to McCain. But he also has a chance to serve his party and country, by putting on the table the issues neither party is addressing.

Are we as overextended strategically and militarily as we surely are financially and fiscally? Should we stick with free trade, if our rivals are rabid economic nationalists? If we let 12-20 million illegals stay, how do we stop the next 12-20 million from coming in?

For his party’s and his country’s sake, as well as his own, Mike Huckabee should keep the conversation going. Because right now, his party is looking at Hillary, Obama — or Bush’s third term.

Check out this really interesting exchange, which is ostensibly about baseball but in fact about much much more.

I am proud to present you, fair readers, with two very distinct reviews of our last album. First off, here’s Scott Irvine’s take from AbsolutePunk.net. This ranks as maybe the most pretentious review I’ve ever read… and I’m proud I had a hand in inspiring it. 

What passes? What mutters? What dies? What ascends? Who is in my head and what do they intend to do? Why, with newly born gusts of cathartically wayward winds stuck in seasonal transitory, am I so warm and when did it become such a timely process to articulate these questions that’ve been burning through my skull all these minutes? These laws of motion do not pertain to the psyche yet I feel so inanimately strung over century old bearings that are only just now making sense. My mind is a canvas for errant deconstruction, unbidden reconstruction, and serene destruction. Compromising with the Push and the Pull of hot sex, firefights, steamy shower bathing, or salsa dancing begets the appropriate response. But somehow this new force is oddly uncompromisable; innately tormented commentary through the subtle discordance and rupture of an underwater panorama. It dilutes the room around me as if the prospect of death through unrivaled beauty could bend space and time; graceful and uninterruptedly. Salvation rears and chokes this Push/Pull until the air supply between myself and these emotions, this religious experience, leaves me quaking to the realness of Foxhole. Lonely deaths and miraculous resurgences of hope manifest themselves in every instrumental nuance; tugging and straining the idea that no human voice is heard here, yet at the same time making it clear that trips to the moon can, in fact, be unmanned (per se). Trumpets cry and squirm throughout this Push/Pull, but it’s their fractured tenor that validates their purpose in being a reminder that not all is perfectly composed when hopelessly sinking in a chime-y mist of harmony. Peaks are formed and crescendos glaze them with twinkly, often dwelling, melodies; some of the most jarring song arrangements I’ve yet to hear rolling off the tongue as if this is all just second-nature and no one is really getting hurt in the process. It reads like a novella yet matter-of-factly sticks to a shade reserved for an epic. It blends contemporary instrumental reconsiderations with the grandeur and confidence of old sea tales that dustily made appearances in pubs over a century ago. Crashing waves and choppy regrets filter through a glorious dissonance between the earnestness of the instrumentation and the unabashed static often made the focal point of the song by the whim of brilliant production. What passes? What mutters? What dies? What ascends? Questions so general are all too specific in the context of the Push/Pull and what may remain unanswered is what gives it a beautiful mystery and flighty circumstance. 

Next up, we have a review which was written in Portugese, and I’ve translated it for you. Translated being a relative term, as it’s still hard to make heads or tails of. Anyone with any idea of what this person is saying, please explain.

This band almost finished. Pra would not go to make lack me, they made a generic post-rock to a large extent and nor guaranteed the complete hearing of the record. There in 2006 they had come back with new members, new house in the Burnt Toast Vinyl and one disquinho of little more than half hour that if did not primava for the originalidade had three factors that they made of perfect it: the baterista Jason Torrence, the use of form fan of heavy rock deliciosoa the clear, clear, limpid production and I know more how many adjective similars there.The complicated one to write on music, in special on instrument, is that I can be here stepping on in the accelerator and to deliver metaphors, poetical lines and nor to little would arrive close to the real sensation that it will cause in you, I can suggest or only induce. E I do not want to make this with this record, therefore it presents common elements to the sort that the less intent listener of bands as Explosions in The Sky and Mogwai goes to perceive. I go to abide itself by three itens that I spoke there in top:The baterista Torrence possesss one led rítimica only one, remembers the strokes of the Dave Lombardo (it is, of the Slayer) that you can listen in any place and identify. The fan of heavy rock does not act in first plan in the majority of the times, always aparando the falls of the songs (perhaps there an explanation for the heading of the record) and creating new lines that arrest the listener, making the record to fly in the phones. She creates a good sensation, pra gives will to listen to another time these faces of the Kentucky alone know if at that moment he was one ground of trumpete or the trimmed turn of the battery that called me the attention. A record that until appeared in some publications specialized in top 2006 but that as all the great majority of this type, does not arrive here.  

 Fun stuff. 

I’m a sucker for clever social commentary, especially when it comes wrapped in parody that, at first glance, is offensive. Not offensive for the sake of offending, but offensive for the sake of waking us up.

And it’s hard for me to know what to say next. A white male blogging on race and culture… well, needless to say trouble lurks ’round every corner. But I saw something today* that woke me up… or, rather, shook my sensibilities in such a way that I couldn’t help blogging about it; in fact, it’s been stuck in my mind for hours now, and it’s probably not going anywhere.

When I was about 14, I went to youth camp—it was here, oddly enough, that I first heard “Gangsta Rap,” specifically Dr. Dre’s classic “The Chronic.” A huge marijuana leaf graced the cover, and the thematic material included gang violence, lurid misogyny and gutter sexuality, and illegal drug use. Some 10-15 years later, much of popular rap music is still dealing with the same subject manner, often in a glorifyingly carefree way. Some argue that it’s “reality;” others (to borrow a term from a different genre) “noise pollution.” Meanwhile, Bill Cosby grabs headlines for speeches encouraging “the black community” to stop glorifying violence, drug use and misogyny… urging parents to act like parents, urging children to pursue their educations and to stay away from drug culture.

Complicating the situation, for me anyway, is the fact that plenty of mature, professional black people enjoy gangsta rap—not to mention all the white male teens and twentysomethings who revel in it. Some of my black coworkers listen to it, yet they’d never see themselves as “hoes” or argue that life on the street is fun and edifying. They’re awesome people, and if I—or anyone, for that matter—ever said or implied that they matched the gangsta rap stereotype, I’d be cursed/slapped/fired/ostracized, and for good reason.

Yet the stereotype pervades, in large part because of rap music. Black Entertainment Television**—pretty much the only nationwide cable network devoted to black culture—plays this kind of garbage at all hours of the day: half-naked women, gawking and flailing in pornographic bliss, set to the beat of an 808 and to the words of some man talking about his conquests and his rims and his crimes and his sex appeal. It’s sad, and it’s infuriating, and yet the black community—no, wait, America—keeps buying it.

And that’s where the parody comes in. A rapper/poet named Bomani Armah put together a rap video that takes deadly aim at the pervasiveness of misogynistic, violent, ignorant rap music and at the masses that let themselves listen to it day in and day out. It’s totally offensive—in fact, just watching it makes a white guy feel a little guilty, as if he’s eavesdropping on a conversation he wasn’t invited into—yet it’s somehow amazing, and it’s got the power to start a major discussion on race, class, ethics and socioeconomics.

Anyway, I think I’ve said all I can say. Below is the video, which is animated. But first, a few disclaimers. I urge you, SERIOUSLY, to consider these things before you push play.

1. If profanity is a stumbling block for you, don’t watch it. There’s a LOT of profanity. Nothing sexual or gross about the language, but it’s filled with cursing. And while I’m not in the habit of broadcasting such stuff, I think it’s worth it for those of you who share my fascination with such parody/commentary.***
2. If you haven’t seen a rap video in the past few years, you won’t understand the visual component. There’s lots of booty shaking and bling-blingin’, a bit of raunchy sexuality, and the images move a warp speed. Be prepared.
3. If you haven’t heard a rap song in the past few years, this one will seem really repetitive… you may think, “Who is this guy? Why can’t he write more than ten words per verse?” Yet this is exactly what passes for music these days… There are plenty of good rappers out there, don’t get me wrong. But most of the crap they play on radio and TV sounds exactly like this.
4. I don’t necessarily agree with all parts of the message.
5. I don’t necessarily disagree with all parts of the message.
6. In a purely spiritual sense, there’s nothing particularly edifying. However, there’s a lot to think about: For the target audience (black youth, mainly, and other rap listeners), a message that’s rarely been offered in such a radical medium; and for others (like me), an opportunity for reflection on subconscious prejudices, assumptions, and direct/indirect advancement of stereotypes.

Okay. So you got this far: Here it is. (If you’re disappointed… well, sorry.)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN2VqFPNS8w]

*Thanks to Adam for pointing me to this.

**Black Entertainment Television has, in fact, aired this video on a number of occasions.

***Does the music sound familiar? It’s possible you know it as what it originally was, which is a classical piece (the composer’s name escapes me). But the actual arrangement that’s been sampled and looped is the theme to “Judge Judy,” a show which at once glorifies and exploits minorities, immigrants and the American lower class in general. Which, in my opinion, makes the video all the better.