Dr. Frank's What's-it

Let it All Hang Out

Paul Morrissey on Andy Warhol:

“I really have to explain who Andy was,” says Morrissey. “He was a disabled man who was autistic, and dyslexic to a degree that he couldn’t read one word. He was frightened and timid, had no artistic instincts, and no interest in anything other than making money.

"Someone once asked me: ‘What did it mean to be Andy’s manager?’ I said: ‘I had to think of things that he might do, I had to do them, and then I had to pretend that he was involved!’”

And on The Sixties:

“Everyone wanted to glorify the Sixties,” he says, sneering, “and talk about Ho Chi Min and being against the war, and having sex, and isn’t it great? They wanted to make it look like a movement of well-meaning people, when in fact it was just a movement of irresponsible selfish children!”

The Real Culprits

Tim Blair notes an interesting turn of phrase in The Age:

On July 7 three trains and a bus in London killed 56 people - including the four suspected suicide bombers - and wounded 700.

(via Norm.)

Nation of Aslam

The source isn't specified, but according to David T. at Harry's Place, the Guardian's NUJ Chapel held a special meeting yesterday to discuss the Dilpazier Aslam case. Aslam was present at the meeting, which produced the following, arguably pretty weird, result:

A vote to condemn [Aslam's] sacking was passed by a narrow majority. A senior editor added an amendment which [also] passed, which noted that he had not satisfactorily answered the questions raised about anti-semitism.

UPDATE: It appears that the Guardian's American executive editor for news has now resigned over Sassygate.

cd bin/laden

The War on Terror as viewed from the Bourne shell.

(via boingboing.)

Sassy is as Sassy Does

The Guardian has dismissed Dilpazier Aslam, the "trainee journalist" and member of the Islamist organization Hizb ut-Tahrir whose recent column on "sassy" suicide bombers was spotlighted and ridiculed by Scott Burgess amongst others.

I imagine some folks are going to have a lot of fun with this quote:

Aslam was advised that the Guardian considered that Hizb ut-Tahrir had promoted violence and anti-semitic material on its website and that membership of the organisation was not compatible with being a Guardian trainee.

To which Aslam replied, "what are you, high?" Just kidding, folks. In fact, Aslam was a diversity hire who turned out to be a little more "diverse" than the Guardian was looking for. They gave him a choice, us or them, and he chose them. One goal of the diversity program is to "challenge stereotypes." Oops!

On the other hand, covering all the bases, MediaGuardian (via an anonymous "staff reporter") attacks Burgess and the anti-Hizb ut-Tahrir campaign and appears to disagree with its own decision.

UPDATE: Burgess returns, with a comprehensive post mortem on the l'affaire Aslam and a fisking of the anonymous MediaGuardian piece.

"Popular" Music

A ways back, I asked for suggestions for a proposed "best of" MTX compilation.

Fastforward to now. If it surprises you to learn that I am no closer to arriving at a track list than I was nearly a year ago, you do not know me very well. However, Kendra has forwarded me this page from Audioscrobbler, which lists the "songs played the most times" and "songs played by the most people." Maybe, as Kendra half-jokingly suggests, we should just take the top sixteen of one of these lists? Or just reissue Love is Dead with "Even Hitler..." added?

Of course, that's not what I plan to do. But it's interesting data, nonetheless.

In other news, one of Kendra's friends just asked her if she was going to the Hysterectomy Experience this weekend...

I Would Like to Thank Myself and God

Cranky tips on how not to do acknowledgments, with instructive examples from Chuck Klosterman and Steve Almond.

There is not one piece of the book publishing process that is not a potential well-spring of embarrassment. As with anything that is done chiefly for effect, there are a lot ways to go with acknowledgments, and all of them are wrong. Even keeping it simple, as the author of the piece recommends, can seem pretentious in its own way, like you're bashing people over the head with your relentless good taste and elegance. But you can't just skip them, as I imagine many authors might prefer, so you do what you got to do. If that involves writing cloying prose poems in honor of your publicist, or thanking God or your cat, so what? You've got to put something in there.

That said, though, this excerpt from Almond's acknowledgments (I assume it's from his latest, The Evil B. B. Chow) is really quite something:

...anyone -- I mean anyone -- who takes up the holy office of making sentences, songs, paintings, those artifacts which serve as testament to our otherwise unarticulated fears and wishes, and last but not least Abraham Lincoln, a man of astonishing eloquence and moral courage, who died, many years ago, for the sins of this country. Let us, in this age of unremitting grievance, choose as he did: to love, to sacrifice, to forgive...

(via Bookslut.)

Show Update

So, like I said, the MTX is playing at Slim's in San Francisco on July 23rd with the Groovie Ghoulies, the Teenage Bottle Rockets, the Teenage Harlets, and Sabrina Stewart.

On the same night, I'll be doing a brief set of solo acoustic songs at the Swedish American Hall to aid the West Memphis Three. It's a benefit and it also stars Jonathan Richman, Chuck Prophet and others. According to an email I just received I'll be on first, from 7:35 - 7:55.

He's Really Quite Good at This

Harry decodes Galloway.

Orange you glad you are not George Bush, whose approval level is at an all time lowest level of 47 percent?

"Jokes designed to make kids laugh, while opening their minds..."

The Normal Recreation of Noble Minds

Professor Bainbridge has his mind on important matters:

I can't help wondering whether J. K. Rowling is as anti-American as the evidence seems to suggest.

(via Donkephant.)

Mar'in

Michael Totten, who is currently engaged in the launch of a centrist group blog called Donklephant (get it?) wonders why "conservatives" seem to tolerate centrists more than "liberals" do.

I don't have an answer, though the observation squares with my experience as a would-be centrist type in a world of normative far-leftism. I recognize that "environmental factors" such as living in Berkeley-Oakland influence this impression. Another influence: my contact with actual "conservatives" (as opposed to the caricatures of them that spring readily to the lips of practically everyone I know and which I generally reject as cartoons) is limited to those I've met through the blogosphere; these folks tend to be from the libertarian camp, which fetishizes tolerance as an important part of the ideology. (I guess people who think of themselves as Left fetishize "tolerance," too, but it's a different sort of tolerance, somehow. I mean, it doesn't tend to encompass tolerance of people who disagree with them on certain crucial matters. That's a caricature, too, perhaps, but it's one I see played out constantly in real life.)

Though I know conservatives through reading their blogs, I doubt I've ever actually met one in person. We just don't have them here. When you're born and raised in the Bay Area, the fact that a person might self-identify as a conservative and nevertheless not be some kind of sick monster can come as a total shock. I grew up thinking that Left was a synonym for Good, and that anything else was so far beneath contempt that I didn't want to know about it. In fact, a lot of conservatives turn out to be smart, nice people when you get to know them. Really. You could have knocked me down with a feather, honestly.

I'm sure there is an alternate-reality Dr. Frank, trying to be a centrist while living in Alabama or something, and I'm sure his results have varied.

Michael proposes a simple answer:

Perhaps the reason conservatives in general are more tolerant of centrists in general is because - for right now anyway - there are more former liberals around than there are former conservatives. It might not be any more complicated than that.

But he's from Portland, which is like Berkeley's affable Canadian cousin. He's swimming in the same lake, in other words.

Aside from the obvious fact that contemporary politics is increasingly difficult to fit into an analytical scheme inherited from Europe, c. 1848, I believe it's largely a cultural rather than a political matter. I mean, a great deal of the "liberal"/"conservative" snipe-a-thon has little actual political content. Long ago, when I used to have a job, I worked in a department where missing an episode of In Living Color was enough to brand you a racist. Being able to prove your familiarity with this show (and to a lesser degree, "Martin") was an important part of the job. It wasn't political. It was a way of demonstrating your good faith as a member of the club. Most your tribe vs. my tribe "political" discussion you see these days is in the same type of mold. The content doesn't matter all that much; it merely provides you with an opportunity to prove you belong. Those who feel like opting out of the whole scheme don't compute to the others. That's centrism, maybe.

So I've never liked being in clubs or having jobs. Plus, no one ever wanted to sponsor me or hire me.

UPDATE: I think this guy may have missed the point of my Shenene analogy... But I gotta say: if you can live in New York City and still manage to maintain an aggrieved sense of being held in "near-universal contempt" on account of your "liberalism," then you are doing a spectacular job of being true to your school. Incidentally, and to my slight surprise, the blog in question appears to be run by a former member of the Reverb Motherfuckers.

The problem is that they felt good about it.

Spiegel interviews the novelist Ian McEwan about London, 7/7, Iraq, and, incidentally, his novel Saturday.

Excerpts:

What keeps getting forgotten here is that the people committing massacres in Iraq right now belong to al-Qaida. We're witnessing a civil war that's taking place in Islam. The most breathtaking statement was the one of al-Qaida claiming responsibility for the London bombings saying it was in return for the massacre in Iraq. But the massacres in Iraq now are being conducted by al-Qaida against Muslims.

I also think it's extraordinary the way in which we get morally selective in our outrages. When there was a rumor that someone at Guantanamo Bay had flushed a Koran down the lavatory, the pages in The Guardian almost caught fire with outrage, but only months before the Taliban had set fire to a mosque and destroyed 300 ancient Korans...

I never thought that in the run up to the war we were discussing simply the difference between war and peace. We were discussing the difference between war and continued torture and genocide and abuse of human rights by a fascist state. I missed any sense of that complexity in the peace camp. I certainly had the feeling that whatever the strong moral arguments were for deposing Saddam, the Americans would not be good nation-builders. But I had a moral problem with this view among the 2 million protesters that you should leave Saddam in power in a fascist state with 27 million Iraqis under him. The problem is that they felt good about it. I thought they should have opposed the war but also felt bad about it.

(via Bookslut.)

Assessing Badness

Parents Against Bad Books in Schools provides this Sample Book Review Documentation Form, which recommends this grading system:

For each type checked above also indicate level of vividness/graphicness using the following as a general guide:

Violent Content

Basic (B): cut of his head

Graphic (G): cut off his head, blood gushed onto floor

Very graphic (VG): cut off his head, blood gushed onto floor, splattered on wall and head bounced on the floor

Extremely graphic (EG): cut off his head, blood gushed onto floor, splattered on wall and head bounced on the floor and his brains slowly oozed out onto the carpet in a purple gray mass.

Breast Descriptions

Basic (B): large breasts

Graphic (G): large, voluptuous bouncing breasts

Very graphic (VG): large, voluptuous bouncing breasts with hard nipples

Extremely graphic (EG): large, voluptuous bouncing breasts with hard nipples covered with glistening sweat and bite marks

Sounds like they had some fun writing it.

(via Moby.)

UPDATE: Of course, I couldn't resist filling out the form for my own book. Here it is:

Does the book contain any violent content? Y/N

Y

If yes, check the type(s):

Fights: x (few, VG)

Beatings: x (many, G)

War: x (few, B)

Torture of people: x (some, B)

Torture of animals:

Hangings/executions: x (few, B)

Other (describe): car crash (few, B), nosebleed (many, EG), boxing (many, EG), Foghat (few, EG), forced Catcher in the Rye (many, EG)

For each type checked above indicate frequency of occurrences using following as a guide:

Few: 1 or 2 times

Some: 3 - 5 times

Many: more than 5 times

See above.

For each type checked above also indicate level of vividness/graphicness using the following as a general guide:

Basic (B): cut of his head

Graphic (G): cut off his head, blood gushed onto floor

Very graphic (VG): cut off his head, blood gushed onto floor, splattered on wall and head bounced on the floor

Extremely graphic (EG): cut off his head, blood gushed onto floor, splattered on wall and head bounced on the floor and his brains slowly oozed out onto the carpet in a purple gray mass

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Does the book contain any sexual content? Y/N

Y

If yes, check the type(s):

Kissing: x (many, EG)

Breast descriptions: x (some, B)

Breast touching: x (some, G)

Sex organ contact: x (some, B)

Consensual: x (some, B)

Non-consensual:

Outside marriage: x (some, B)

Within marriage

Sexual assault

Rape

Gang rape

Violence exciting someone sexually

Sadomasochist

Masturbation: x (few, B)

Homosexual: x (few, B)

Erections: x (few, B)

Wet dreams: x (few, B)

Bestiality:

Pedophilia: x (some, B)

Necrophilia

Oral sex: x (many, B)

Anal sex

Other (describe): Asses (many, B)

For each type checked above indicate frequency of occurrences using following as a guide:

Few: 1 or 2 times

Some: 3 - 5 times

Many: more than 5 times

For each type checked above also indicate level of vividness/graphicness using the following as a general guide:

Basic (B): large breasts

Graphic (G): large, voluptuous bouncing breasts

Very graphic (VG): large, voluptuous bouncing breasts with hard nipples

Extremely graphic (EG): large, voluptuous bouncing breasts with hard nipples covered with glistening sweat and bite marks

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Does the book contain any Family Life related content? Y/N

Y

If yes describe any Family Life content not covered under sex or violence above (e.g. abortion, suicide, euthanasia, birth control, drugs, alcohol):

suicide (few, B); drugs (many, B); alcohol (some, EG); vegetarianism/veganism (few, EG); hippies (some, EG)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Does the book contain any religious degradation or slurs? Y/N

Y

If yes provide brief description/summary:

narrator believes in God out of spite

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Does the book contain any foul language? Y/N

Y

If yes, provide summary of which words and frequency of use:

fuck, ass, underwear, bitch, cock tease, breast, tit, boobies, nipple, bastard, Norman Mailer, Wishbone Ash

Shameful

Andrew Sullivan reviews the Schmidt Report on cruel and abusive treatment at Gitmo in some detail. It is worthwhile, though uncomfortable, reading. Whether the incidents described count as "torture" or not is a matter of definition, perhaps; but it is clear that they shouldn't have happened and that they were indeed a part of official policy. Also, and nearly as shameful, those who blamed "rambunctious" underlings acting on their own for what they knew to be official policy lied through their teeth and got away with it. Why put Lyndie England in jail when Don Rumsfeld still holds office? Heads should roll for this, of course. And, of course, heads won't. Hard to avoid Sullivan's conclusion:

When president George Bush said that the vile practices recorded at Abu Ghraib did not represent America, he was right. They don't. They represent his administration and his policies. Of that there can no longer be any reasonable doubt.

More here.

UPDATE: See the discussion over at John Cole's place. As one commenter puts it:

We should be a shining beacon, not a bunch of weasels skating the razor edge of the law.

Chock Full of Nuts

David T. at Harry's Place links to this twisted article from Indymedia UK. I only check out Indymedia when its loopier moments are linked by someone else (as here, for example) so I'm in no position to judge whether it represents a "sad decline" or not, but it sure is something else.

It's a highly dramatic, stylized alternative universe spy tale, in which a goateed Spock... er, I mean, a goateed Tony Blair gleefully plans the 7/7 bombings along with his collaborators MI5, MI6, the Israelis, the Americans, the Freemasons and the City of London in order to further his goal of eventually crowning himself the Prince of Europe.

It's what an antisemitic, anti-American, anti-Anglo, alternative history, Da Vinci code sort of Tom Clancy might sound like, I suppose. We have Tony Blair ("trying to look shocked and concerned, but inwardly full of glee...") along with his "namesake and fellow occultist" Chief of Police Sir Ian Blair; and we have Netanyahu ("Hashem," [he] growled softly, "deliver us from the ignorant Goyim and their slow-witted ways.")

Many of the comments attached to the article are skeptical, but those are the boring ones. Here's a snip from one of the more "interesting" ones:

a plausible account of last thursday's events, and although much of it is supposition, it has the ring of, if not actual truth, then probability about it...

It seems to me more likely that Blair, far from being the great organiser, was simply told that this attack would be happening in order to further the aims of the campaign towards a global fascist superstate, or One World Government.

The only concession he may have been able to wrend was that the devices were relatively small, and therefore the loss of life was minimal.

In my view Blair is a spineless monster and was aware of the plan, but I dont feel he had any choice in the attacks.

I agree with James that this is orchestrated and implemented from within the ranks of Freemasonry, and that much of it is financed and organised from within the Square Mile of the City of London, but what we should not lose sight of is that these are, in motive and means if not composition, essentially Zionist entities, as is the Bush administration and the British establishment.

I posted the link in the comments to this long spiraled-out-of-control post about George Galloway, and our resident pseudonymous conventional wisdom-averse Iranian nationalist commenter indicated that this "perspective" is basically what he had in mind, with unspecified reservations. Have at, folks.

You've Come a Long Way, Internets

Moby points out this page, evidently a pic of the original "welcome" page for "Amazon.com books" from 1995. Note retarded logo and bizarro slogan:

If you explore just one thing, make it our personal notification service. We think it is very cool!

San Diego

Found in Oakland.

Already 42 with Only Two Books Out - Hurry Up, Man

Harvey Pekar (yes, that Harvey Pekar) reviews Chris Sorrentino's "re-imagining" of the Patty Hearst kidnapping in the Baltimore Sun. He likes it.

A Good Book

My friend Beth Lisick has a new book out, Everybody into the Pool. It's a series of humorous, charmingly told, stories about her semi-alternalife, but that description, while accurate, doesn't quite suffice. There are a lot of arch daily-life humorists out there these days, but Beth is in a category all her own.

For one thing, her approach completely avoids the clichés of the run-of-the-mill contemporary humorous memoir, chick or otherwise. In fact, Beth inhabits a common, yet rarely explored, piece of cultural territory: not quite "normal" enough for the mainstream, yet too conventional in some ways to fit completely into the various alterna-cultures on offer. From this misfit-among-the-misfits perspective, she fires off wry, hilarious, and occasionally profoundly moving observations about both sides of the divide. Once you see it done you can't believe you never noticed the fact that no one has ever tried it before.

Plus, her jokes are genuinely funny. And she manages the neat trick of summing up each story with a coda that suddenly throws the barrage of one-liners into a new, contemplative perspective that can really be quite moving. Yet it never feels forced or contrived; each one somehow managed to take me by surprise just a bit. After you finish each story, you want to close the book and stare off into space for a while, thinking about life. I got all choked up by several of them, in fact. This is breath-takingly good writing.

It's a great book, with a lot of humor and heart. You should buy it.

She's doing a slew of readings over the next couple of weeks. Check her out.

They Tried to Warn Us

The Secret Organisation Group of al-Qaeda of Jihad Organisation in Europe:

We have repeatedly warned the British Government and people. We have fulfilled our promise and carried out our blessed military raid in Britain after our mujahideen exerted strenuous efforts over a long period of time to ensure the success of the raid.

We continue to warn the governments of Denmark and Italy and all the Crusader governments that they will be punished in the same way if they do not withdraw their troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. He who warns is excused.

George Galloway:

We argued, as did the security services in this country, that the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq would increase the threat of terrorist attack in Britain. Tragically Londoners have now paid the price of the Government ignoring such warnings. We urge the government to remove people in this country from harms way, as the Spanish government acted to remove its people from harm, by ending the occupation of Iraq and by turning its full attention to the development of a real solution to the wider conflicts in the Middle East.

Only then will the innocents here and abroad be able to enjoy a life free of the threat of needless violence.

What a Load of Bloody Row

So the MTX is playing at Slim's in San Francisco on July 23rd with the Groovie Ghoulies, the Teenage Bottle Rockets, the Teenage Harlets, and Sabrina Stewart.

On the same night, God willing, I'm going to stop by at the Swedish American Hall to play a couple three acoustic songs to aid the West Memphis Three. It's a benefit and it also stars Jonathan Richman, Chuck Prophet and others. I'm not sure what time I'll be playing, but it'll probably be on the early side of the evening because of the Slim's gig.

The Comma of Truth

Hak Mao spots an apt punctuation error, if error it be, on the Where We Stand page of the Students Waving Placards website:

We oppose everything, which turns workers from one country against those from another.

By the Way

Norm Geras runs a profile/questionnaire of a different blogger every Friday, and this past Friday that profile was of me, for what it's worth.