Month: December 2009

A sickening health-care bill?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 1 Comment

I forgot to add AlterNet to my bookmarks when I shifted operations to the new iMac, and so only stumbled across this post today. It’s a Dec. 21 transcript of a “Bill Moyers Journal” show featuring Rolling Stone‘s Matt Taibbi and The American Prospect‘s Robert Kuttner discussing health-care reform and President Obama’s role in same.

Both Taibbi and Kuttner are deeply critical of Obama’s performance in the passage of what Kuttner calls “a very feeble bill.” Yet Kuttner would vote for it, if only to bitch-slap the GOP and pray that the win helps the prez grow a pair. Taibbi would not. And Kuttner warns that Obama had better start acting like the champion of the people against the special interests if he wants to catch the social-movement tsunami he sees on the horizon:

“One way or another, there is going to be a social movement. Because so many people are hurting, and so many people are feeling correctly that Wall Street is getting too much and Main Street is getting too little. And if it’s not a progressive social movement that articulates the frustration and the reform program, you know that the right wing is going to do it. And that, I think, is what ought to be scaring us silly.”

• Extra Credit Reading: Kevin Drum and Paul Krugman beg to differ.

Tom Waits for no one

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 2 Comments

Here’s an early present for you — the Los Angeles Times reports that Tom Waits may (or may not) produce a new studio album in 2010.

In the meantime, the maestro has already given us some good quotes regarding the writing of music. Quoth Waits: “It’s like diamond-cutting or hunting for bear or dropping out of a tree. Sometimes, it’s like ping-pong. Other times it’s like operating on a flamingo. Every song’s different. Some are like empty swimming pools, and you’ve got to be the water.”

• Extra Credit Bonus Celebrity Artist Quotage: Here’s Terry Gilliam on making movies: “Once the voices are in your head, it’s either make a movie or kill a lot of people. That’s probably what I should be doing to get money for the movies: saying, ‘If you don’t give me the money, I will have to slaughter large numbers of people to deal with these voices in my head.'” Gilliam and Waits worked together on “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,” which looks seriously weird (gee, imagine that; weirdness from Waits and Gilliam).

Happy winter solstice

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments

Today is the shortest day of the year, though for a man condemned to keeping a cycling website interesting in the absence of actual news it could be considered one of the longest.

It’s also the conclusion of the annual Festival of Zappadan, which as all good Zappatistas know runs from the date of Frank Zappa’s death (Dec. 4) through the day of his birth (Dec. 21). Thanks and a honk from the Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny to Fried Green al-Qaedas for emceeing this year’s festivities. Burnt weeny sandwiches in lumpy gravy for everyone! But stay the hell away from that yellow snow.

Damn the (snow)man!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments
There's a new Chairman Meow in town.
There's a new Chairman Meow in town.

Miss Mia Sopaipilla has clearly been overexposed to Islamic socialism, Christ-free “holiday” seasons and the liberal media.

This morning, after brazenly toasting her po-po on our DSL modem she stalked into the living room and ruthlessly deposed The Man — the snowman, that is, the one that this time of year sits atop the subwoofer to our home theater system.

Oh, the humanity. Snowmanity. Sean Hannity. Whatever.

Dog Breath, In the Year of the Plague

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

Herself and I got out and about for a bit yesterday, checkbook in hand, for a bit of the old ho ho ho.

We wrote checks to the Marian House soup kitchen, the Care and Share food bank and the Humane Society of the Pikes Peak Region (way too many puppies and kittens spending the holiday season in the joint). Then we treated ourselves to an orgy of consumerism in Sparrow Hawk Gourmet Cookware, buying a new Wüsthof chef’s knife and 12-inch non-stick Emerilware skillet, Emerilware basically being All-Clad Lite.

Back home, I whipped up a tureen of posole, Herself assembled a salad, and we watched an episode of “Dexter” using our new-used Sony Blu-ray player, because nothing screams “Happy holidays!” like pork products and serial homicide. Good night, Uncle Meat, wherever you are.