Genius?

This is a pretty good playlist, all based on the first track in the list.

Weirdo | The Charlatans | Between 10th and 11th | 3:38
Way Down Now | World Party | Goodbye Jumbo | 3:50
Bull in the Heather | Sonic Youth | Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star | 3:05
Start Choppin’ | Dinosaur Jr | Ear-Bleeding Country: Best Of Dinosaur Jr | 5:37
Perfect Skin | Lloyd Cole & The Commotions | 1984-1989 | 3:14
I Love a Man in Uniform | Gang of Four | Songs of the Free | 4:05
What Difference Does It Make? | The Smiths | The Best Of The Smiths, Vol. 1 | 3:51
Take the Skinheads Bowling | Camper Van Beethoven | Telephone Free Landslide Victory | 2:32
Hey Dude | Kula Shaker | K | 4:09
The Bottom Line | Big Audio Dynamite | Planet BAD: Greatest Hits | 3:46
Rejoice | U2 | October | 3:40
Ship Of Fools | World Party | Private Revolution | 4:30
This Is Not a Love Song | Public Image Ltd. | Public Image Ltd.: The Greatest Hits, So Far | 4:13
Generals And Majors | XTC | Black Sea | 4:04
Herculean | The Good, The Bad And The Queen | Herculean – Single of the Week | 4:00
Alec Eiffel | Pixies | Wave Of Mutilation: Best Of Pixies | 2:47
Locked Out | Crowded House | Recurring Dream | 3:19
These Days | R.E.M. | Life’s Rich Pageant | 3:25
Out of the Blue | Roxy Music | Country Life | 4:46
Love Spreads | The Stone Roses | The Very Best of The Stone Roses | 5:47
Disappointed | Public Image Ltd. | 9 | 5:34
King For A Day | XTC | Oranges & Lemons | 3:38
Dirty Boots | Sonic Youth | Goo | 5:29
I’m Free (feat. Junior Reid) | The Soup Dragons | Lovegod | 3:24
Put The Message In The Box | World Party | Goodbye Jumbo | 4:16

the people who need this most won’t see it

Small towns, while they still exist . . .

Leave the fantasy land of convention rhetoric, and you will find that small-town America, this legendary place of honesty and sincerity and dignity, is not doing very well. If you drive west from Kansas City, Mo., you will find towns where Main Street is largely boarded up. You will see closed schools and hospitals. You will hear about depleted groundwater and massive depopulation.

And eventually you will ask yourself, how did this happen? Did Hollywood do this? Was it those “reporters and commentators” with their fancy college degrees who wrecked Main Street, U.S.A.?

No. For decades now we have been electing people like Sarah Palin who claimed to love and respect the folksy conservatism of small towns, and yet who have unfailingly enacted laws to aid the small town’s mortal enemies.

Without raising an antitrust finger they have permitted fantastic concentration in the various industries that buy the farmer’s crops. They have undone the New Deal system of agricultural price supports in favor of schemes called “Freedom to Farm” and loan deficiency payments — each reform apparently designed to secure just one thing out of small town America: cheap commodities for the big food processors. Richard Nixon’s Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz put the conservative attitude toward small farmers most bluntly back in the 1970s when he warned, “Get big or get out.”

[From The GOP Loves the Heartland To Death – WSJ.com]

good reads

Chosen Chosen by Mark Millar


My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is a dangerously good book, and one of the many reasons why these books w/ pictures, graphic novels, comix, whatever are so good. I think of them as paper movies sometimes, as the action and imagery are driven by the writer but the artist(s) can add so much, just as a good cinematographer and team of actors can do. It’s a quick but substantial read, and there are “behind the music” tidbits that will make you read over it in detail to see what you may have missed.

View all my reviews.

quote of the century

On the remark that “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.”:

“Mrs. Palin needs to be reminded that Jesus Christ was a community organizer and Pontius Pilate was a governor.” [source]

Firedoglake » GOP Thinks Organizing In Your Community Is Worthless :

without community organizers like Martin Luther King, Jr., we’d all still be dealing with separate water fountains for coloreds and Jim Crow Laws. And I mean the old ones, not the new poll tax crap that Hans Von Spakovsky keeps trying to sneak in through the sewers.

Oh, and ladies? No community organizers means that your voice doesn’t count for shit. No vote for you!

Lost your job and you need a hand with the utility bills or some food from the local church pantry? Suck it up, America, because the folks who used to extend a hand to those in need don’t count in Republican land. That “do unto others” crap has to stop, and Jesus was clearly just a rabble-rousing, do-gooder. Loaves, fishes, feeding the multitudes? Hogwash.

Your neighborhood watch program, to help supplement the police force whose budget keeps getting cut under the Bush Administration? Well, you don’t deserve a safe neighborhood and your efforts are useless anyway.

Cleaning up a local riverbed or a walking trail with your kid’s scout troop? Republicans think you are a loser.

Working with a job training or literacy program to help folks move from welfare to work? Republicans think your efforts deserve ridicule. Promoting a spay and neuter program at your local animal shelter? Republicans are laughing at you. Volunteer at your church pantry to help the least of these? Republicans are mocking you.