i’m famous

my buddy’s short vid for class.  Being one of the two leads required a lot of time and effort, an artistic vision and a dream to make something happen – something big to happen.   Well here it is, enjoy…  

Niiice

I want these… too bad they cost a but-load.  Spiz’ike bru.  They are the new, hot high top.  Dare they de-throne the classic reebok pumps… 

 

Dems and Reps – The New York Times

I’m not sure if I 100 percent agree with this article, but it is interesting nonetheless.  Have Democrats become the conceited, knit-picky party? And is that a result of the nature of most party members (their idealistic outtake on public policies) or is it the fact that they have been virtually absent from the White House over the past few decades – making them more spiteful of those in office?  Do they need to be critical to keep us aware of what policies are enacted?  Just some questions that I had after reading the article.  Maybe it will take a Democrat President to turn the Republicans into the captious party that only wants to point a finger and prove the other side “wrong.”  Mistakes will be made in office – time can cause them – and, I think, it takes that mistake to turn the opposing party into a critical mass, a group of people more interested in proving wrong than implementing positive changes through whatever policies are necessary.

 

  Democrats Should Read Kipling

 

By WILLIAM KRISTOL

Published: February 18, 2008

Browsing through a used-book store Friday — in the Milwaukee airport, of all places — I came across a 1981 paperback collection of George Orwell’s essays. That’s how I happened to reread his 1942 essay on Rudyard Kipling. Given Orwell’s perpetual ability to elucidate, one shouldn’t be surprised that its argument would shed light— or so it seems to me — on contemporary American politics.

 

Orwell offers a highly qualified appreciation of the then (and still) politically incorrect Kipling. He insists that one must admit that Kipling is “morally insensitive and aesthetically disgusting.” Still, he says, Kipling “survives while the refined people who have sniggered at him seem to wear so badly.” One reason for this is that Kipling “identified himself with the ruling power and not with the opposition.”“In a gifted writer,” Orwell remarks, “this seems to us strange and even disgusting, but it did have the advantage of giving Kipling a certain grip on reality.” Kipling “at least tried to imagine what action and responsibility are like.”

 

For, Orwell explains, “The ruling power is always faced with the question, ‘In such and such circumstances, what would you do?’, whereas the opposition is not obliged to take responsibility or make any real decisions.” Furthermore, “where it is a permanent and pensioned opposition, as in England, the quality of its thought deteriorates accordingly.”

 

If I may vulgarize the implications of Orwell’s argument a bit: substitute Republicans for Kipling and Democrats for the opposition, and you have a good synopsis of the current state of American politics.

 

Having controlled the executive branch for 28 of the last 40 years, Republicans tend to think of themselves as the governing party — with some of the arrogance and narrowness that implies, but also with a sense of real-world responsibility. Many Democrats, on the other hand, no longer even try to imagine what action and responsibility are like. They do, however, enjoy the support of many refined people who snigger at the sometimes inept and ungraceful ways of the Republicans. (And, if I may say so, the quality of thought of the Democrats’ academic and media supporters — a permanent and, as it were, pensioned opposition — seems to me to have deteriorated as Orwell would have predicted.)The Democrats won control of Congress in November 2006, thanks in large part to President Bush’s failures in Iraq. Then they spent the next year seeking to ensure that he couldn’t turn those failures around. Democrats were “against” the war and the surge. That was the sum and substance of their policy. They refused to acknowledge changing facts on the ground, or to debate the real consequences of withdrawal and defeat. It was, they apparently thought, the Bush administration, not America, that would lose. The 2007 Congressional Democrats showed what it means to be an opposition party that takes no responsibility for the consequences of the choices involved in governing.

 

So it continues in 2008. The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Gen. Michael Hayden, the director of national intelligence, the retired Vice Admiral Mike McConnell, and the attorney general, the former federal judge Michael Mukasey, are highly respected and nonpolitical officials with little in the way of partisanship or ideology in their backgrounds. They have all testified, under oath, that in their judgments, certain legal arrangements regarding surveillance abilities are important to our national security.

 

Not all Democrats have refused to listen. In the Senate, Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the Intelligence Committee, took seriously the job of updating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in light of technological changes and court decisions. His committee produced an impressive report, and, by a vote of 13 to 2, sent legislation to the floor that would have preserved the government’s ability to listen to foreign phone calls and read foreign e-mail that passed through switching points in the United States. The full Senate passed the legislation easily — with a majority of Democrats voting against, and Senators Obama and Clinton indicating their opposition from the campaign trail.

 

But the Democratic House leadership balked — particularly at the notion of protecting from lawsuits companies that had cooperated with the government in surveillance efforts after Sept. 11. Director McConnell repeatedly explained that such private-sector cooperation is critical to antiterror efforts, in surveillance and other areas, and that it requires the assurance of immunity. “Your country is at risk if we can’t get the private sector to help us, and that is atrophying all the time,” he said. But for the House Democrats, sticking it to the phone companies — and to the Bush administration — seemed to outweigh erring on the side of safety in defending the country.

 

To govern is to choose, a Democrat of an earlier generation, John F. Kennedy, famously remarked. Is this generation of Democrats capable of governing?

Aspen Extreme

Do you like montages?  Well I do, and so does the director of this quintessential 80’s flick  - a special, boppin’ 80’s adventure about two ski bums who storm the slopes of Aspen with that classic eighties style: skis close together, wicked jump turns, blinding white smiles, classic 80’s prock (pop-rock) – it’s TOP GUN ON THE SKI SLOPES! Woah!  And then there are the bad guys with Hollywood tans and massive egos, and the enticing babes with tight, one-piece, neon ski suits who, of course, are usually married and a source of enormous political power – that is, they run the scene, the economy, the place… Anyway, check it out without that critical eye that we are bred to love and you will be launched into another world where something corny is also something genius.  At least look at the poster:

  

Short Ski Edit

My buddy’s ski edit from last year.  It’s some good stuff.  He’s in it doing some gnarly aerial maneuvers. 

Umphrey’s again

This is some more concert footage of Umphrey’s McGee.  They scheduled another date in April for Higher Ground so I started thinking about the band again.  The two guitarists, Cinniger and Bayliss, I think, make one of the best guitar duo’s today – they are very talented musicians.  Check out the solo at the end, it’s totally awesome.  It keeps creating peaks on top of peaks.  Fyi: Cinniger is on the left with the Fender Strat looking guitar (it’s actually a G&L – Leo Fender’s side-project) and Bayliss is on the right with the PRS (Paul Reed Smith) guitar.  Great song too!…starts out reggae and ends with a rockin’ solo.

100 words

Pillow Redmond was my pillow.  It was white and skinny and small so I could hug it.  There were blue frills that were once stiff that draped on all four sides.  A picture of a bear was the front.  It was just sitting there – passively, staring, becoming more inactive as the pillow got older, sitting with blocks forever and never moving.  Then the holes came.  It was a cold pillow so it was nice at night – I began creeping my hands into the tears and feeling the sturdy mass inside, soothing my skin and making me love my pillow more.

multimedia – new link

about 100

i just wrote that last post stream of consciousness style, and usually after writing I need to add/delete words to get to 100 (and I check the count along the way).  Well, this time I didn’t stop once and it was a perfect 100.  But maybe not that perfect… What a coincidence!!  

100 words

I got the worst hair cut in my life once in my life.  It was terrible and short and itchy and I had to take a shower after I got it because there was hair product stuck in my head and then my fingers got all greasy and I was even more pissed but then someone at school said it looked good so it wasn’t a big deal.  It was because it was short and I liked it long, but then I started getting it short because all of the other fifth grade girls liked it and I looked older.