22 1 / 2010
Look at how this dude writes! Plus he listens to The Field and downloads Hot Chip for me. Le sigh. <3
Brothers
Hot Chip, from the forthcoming One Life Stand
[MP3]Its backing track is clearly imbued with mnml essence of The Field. This track stands out, but is not at all exceptional on the LP for its warm, fuzzy sentimentality (lyric or sonic.) I presume the brothers are leaving the dance floor burners to their long queue of eager remixers.
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15 1 / 2010
I gave some money, followed the breaking news, feel genuinely sad for a staggering misfortune that I have no right to try to empathize with. In the continuing saga of dejected futility, I’m sure I’m not even in the first thousand people to post this song to their blog. But you know, I like this song, so here it is.
Arcade Fire - Haiti
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08 1 / 2010
"The pathetic fallacy is a category mistake. It’s the false attribution of human feelings, thoughts, or intentions to inanimate objects, or to living entities that cannot possibly have such feelings, thoughts, or intentions—cruel seas, dancing leaves, hot air that “wants” to rise. The American government has its human aspects—it is staffed by human beings, mostly—but its atomized, at-odds-with-itself legislative structure (House and Senate, each with its arcane rules, its semi-feudal committee chairs, and its independently elected members, none of whom are accountable or fully responsible for outcomes) makes it more like an inanimate object. In our sclerotic lawmaking process, it is not enough that the President, a majority of both Houses of Congress, and a majority of the voters at the last election favor extending health care to all citizens.
The left-wing critics are right about the conspicuous flaws of the pending health-care reform—its lack of even a weak “public option,” its too meagre subsidies, its windfalls for Big Pharma, its capitulation on abortion coverage, its reliance on private insurance. And there are surely senators and representatives whose motives are base or, broadly speaking, corrupt. But it is nonsense to attribute the less than fully satisfactory result to the alleged perfidy of the President or “the Democrats.” The critics’ indignation would be better directed at what an earlier generation of malcontents called “the system”—starting, perhaps, with the Senate’s filibuster rule, an inanimate object if there ever was one."
Obama and the left : The New Yorker
Some of my lefty loved ones have been so frustrated with Obama and the Democratic leadership of late. I’ve been having a hard time articulating that I when I don’t exactly agree with them it’s not because I am satisfied with the current state of things, but because I think they are let down by a “failure” where “success” was never an attainable construct.
This neat little article by Hendrik Hertzberg words it nicely, I think.
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06 1 / 2010
"I didn’t want my successors 50 years from now to think, ‘Who was this jackass who passed up the opportunity to buy the most valuable piece of real estate in San Francisco?’"
