Friday, August 27, 2004

Bitching/Moaning
Last night, while waiting for my three loads of desperately needed laundry to dry, I decided to peruse one of the local weekly newspapers, and it occurred to me that most of the stuff people think is really cool is actually crap. Further, most of the “mainstream” stuff they love to make fun of is basically the same as the crap they think is cool, but with different haircuts.

Also I was thinking recently about the fact that, having moved from Brooklyn to San Francisco just after the end of the Bay area’s dot-com boom (during which lots of people made a shitload of money for playing foosball in live/work lofts) and just before Brooklyn became the Mecca of the ultra-hip (during which lots of people got a lot of attention for having cool haircuts and being in bands with names like “The Gallbladders”), I basically got my relocation completely backwards—if I had only reversed the move, going from San Fran to Brooklyn in 2001, I would currently be achieving rousing success with my ragin' indie band and living off the giant nest-egg I’d accumulated while serving as Chief Makinshitup Officer of Moneypit.com. I even had a great idea for what I could've called my band: “Foreigner.”

Shit happens, I suppose.

But lest you think I have nothing positive to offer my gentlereaders this sunny Friday, here comes the...

WULAD Web Wround-up
I came across the following sentence in a story about a parole officer in my home town of Binghamton, the jewel of upstate New York’s delicate armpit:

Christopher Ayers had been on probation for six days after getting out of jail when he beat a friend to death with her own prosthetic leg. That was eight years ago.
Tragedy + time = comedy, as the saying goes. Eight years, is that enough? No? Damn.

As my own city falls under the oppressive occupation of giant bland corporate-approved heart sculptures, I strongly believe that if ever there was an appropriate target to be savagely beheaded by radicals, it’s one of those sidewalk-clogging "art"-cows:
The Militant Graffiti Artists last week sent an email with a video clip attachment to Swedish daily Aftonbladet showing one of the exhibit's brightly colored cows flanked by two masked militants clad in black and brandishing electric drills as though they were machine guns. In the video, the militants reportedly demanded that the Cow Parade "be declared non-art, otherwise hostages will be sacrificed". ... The paper on Tuesday published pictures from a new video film depicting how the masked militants decapitated the cow.
I believe it was Jefferson who declared, “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and fiberglass cattle.”

Finally—you may have seen this already. That would be too bad, ‘cause it’s awesome.