Business-tech columnist and author Sarah Lacy ventured out onto the Plains and into our fair metropolis of Omaha for a book tour, expecting to find stolid Midwestern types respectably and soberly inhabiting a stolid Midwestern city.
With a few geeks in the corner.
One, naturally, would have just a leeeeeetle bit of the evening's baked dish hanging off his pocket protector.
But, really, if you know a little about the kind of folk who homesteaded Nebraska, you no longer are surprised that Omaha is a little bit quirky and whole bunch creative. For example, here are some typical Nebraska homesteaders:
That makes one less who will look humanity square in the eye and tell it what's what.
THIS IS SOLZHENITSYN'S diagnosis of what ails the West, excerpted from his 1978 address at Harvard's commencement -- a speech, come to think of it, about as brave as anything that had gotten him in so much trouble back in the U.S.S.R.:
I am not examining here the case of a world war disaster and the changes which it would produce in society. As long as we wake up every morning under a peaceful sun, we have to lead an everyday life. There is a disaster, however, which has already been under way for quite some time. I am referring to the calamity of a despiritualized and irreligious humanistic consciousness.
To such consciousness, man is the touchstone in judging and evaluating everything on earth. Imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects. We are now experiencing the consequences of mistakes which had not been noticed at the beginning of the journey. On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. In the East, it is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party. In the West, commercial interests tend to suffocate it. This is the real crisis. The split in the world is less terrible than the similarity of the disease plaguing its main sections.
If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline. Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism.
It would be retrogression to attach oneself today to the ossified formulas of the Enlightenment. Social dogmatism leaves us completely helpless in front of the trials of our times.
Many Ibiza tourists are hardcore ravers who drink, dance and smoke away their nights then spend their days in the baking sun.
No wonder it is known as the island that never sleeps.
But however much fun it may sound, the non-stop lifestyle takes its toll on the sleep-deprived, dehydrated partygoers’ faces, with many needing more than a dab of concealer to cover their facial creases.
But the party girls refuse to rein in the late nights and heavy-drinking sessions.
Instead, they have found the perfect way to revive their looks — Botox.
The latest must-do in Ibiza isn’t a new club night, it is beach Botox — and mum and daughter team, Christine, 47, and daughter Nicole Shenton, 27, are cleaning up.
They moved themselves and their beauty firm, Belisimma, to the White Isle six years ago after discovering there was a gap in the market on the island.
(snip)
“Business has been non-stop since we started, especially from British party girls.
“A lot of girls admit the most sleep they get is kipping on the beach in the day.”
Mum Christine says: “We find that most of our clients are British girls who have good jobs, money to spend and are here to party.
“Their faces are obviously affected by the amount they drink, smoke and sunbathe. They want to do all those things but still look good.
“That’s where we come in.”
One of Belisimma’s regulars Laura Jackson refuses to get on the plane home looking worse than when she arrived — even though she spends a fortnight partying every night.
Single mum Laura, a jewellery designer from Manchester, says: “I’ve been having Botox out here for the past two years and can’t get enough of it.
“It’s great — the moment I land, I call Christine to get some Botox before I hit the clubs. Then after two weeks of clubbing, she gives me a top-up before I get on the plane home.
“When I tell people I’m 25, they never believe me. It’s amazing considering the kind of lifestyle I lead. It’s non-stop partying from the moment I get off the plane, and I usually come to Ibiza at least twice a year. “This means a fortnight of drinking a lot and getting hardly any sleep.
“Also, when I’m at home I go out drinking every weekend, and spend most Sundays in bed eating a fry up.”
"SINGLE MUM LAURA" deludes herself in more ways than one. Go to the Sun story page and look at her picture.
And I'm quite sure that when she tells people she's only 25, they never do believe her.
Just like -- way deep down where we can see the truth about who we really are -- we don't believe, not really, our own PR about how happy, healthy, prosperous and enlightened we are in our Western, postmodern rave-up.
John, Paul, George and Ringo have nothing on Miley Cyrus, a.k.a. Hannah Montana. And, if John Lennon was right and the Beatles were, back in the day, more popular than Jesus Christ. . . .
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, Mrs. Favog and I attended a 6-year-old girl's birthday party. A 6-year-old who loves, naturellement, Hannah Montana.
Among the loot the child raked in:
* A Hannah Montana doll. * A Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus CD. * A Hannah Montana backpack. * A Hannah Montana notebook. * A Hannah Montana singing pen. * A Hannah Montana "activity pack." * Hannah Montana pencils, sticky notes, etc., etc., etc.
WHEN I WAS 6, the Beatles were all the rage. But even a cultural force like the Fab Four was easier to escape than the marketing apocalypse behind the 15-year-old daughter of Mr. Achy Breaky Heart.
Is there any point to American culture -- at least anymore -- other than pimping the latest disposable teen star to the toddler-to-tween demographic? And then selling the kiddies Jägerbombsand NuvaRings once they -- like fallen tween angel Britney Spears -- achieve puberty . . . and communion with their inner skank?
Sunday, as I struggled with acute Hannah Montana overload, I mused what it does to a teen-ager's head -- even if she did have the advantage (unlike some noted train wrecks) of not being raised by money-grubbing hillbillies -- to walk into a store and see shelves and shelves of . . . herself.
Commodified and idolized.
Personally, I don't think there are enough shrinks in the world to deal with that kind of interpersonal train wreck. Particularly after the applause stops, and all manner of commodified you ends up in the deep-discount bin.
Or worse, at the 99¢ Only Store.
There's only thing more ridiculous than our worshiping some all-powerful deity Who died on a cross and can have His body and blood, soul and divinity become one with a wafer of unleavened bread and a chalice of wine so His creation might feed on Him.
In all the sordid racial history of the American South, one taboo was always powerful enough to kill.
The act of it was strictly illegal. In 1955, in the Mississippi Delta, the mere thought that a 14-year-old black boy might have had it on his mind put Emmitt Till in his grave. What was left of him.
MISCEGENATION.
If all the racial bugaboos of the segregated South had a corresponding curse word, miscegenation would be the F-word, the C-word, the MF-word and the S-word all rolled into one. Especially if we're talking a black man marrying, having sex with, dating or just looking wrong at a white woman.
(White men having their way with black women -- so long as no wedding vows were exchanged -- garnered de jure disapproval but a de facto wink and a grin.)
Miscegenation.
The feds said states' rights didn't include forbidding interracial matrimony. But the toxic enculturation of a Jim Crow society remains lodged in many a Southern mind, not unlike a malignant and inoperable tumor.
The fear of miscegenation is the kind of carefully taught evil that wormed its way into the subconscious of Southerners -- of Americans -- of a certain age and older. It gets beneath one's beliefs and convictions; it adheres itself to Pavlovian recesses of the subconscious, the ones governing what you feel in that split second before moral rectitude kicks in.
IT'S AN UGLY TABOO that feeds on the ugliest parts of our human fallenness.
Which, of course, makes exploiting voters' ingrained race-mixing revulsion a no-brainer for the savvy-but-unethical political operative.
And, in case you haven't noticed, there are just a few of those in the Gret Stet of Louisiana. It looks like a few more have just crawled out from under a rock in Baton Rouge to take racially charged shots at the city's African-American mayor, as reported by The Advocate:
Mayor-President Kip Holden on Friday said he is calling for a criminal investigation into a political mailer that alleges he had an affair with a married woman and was beaten up by her husband.
The mailer was in the form of a letter signed by the Rev. Charles Matthews, who Holden said does not exist.
The mailer includes a photo of Holden with a “black eye and busted lip” that he said is actually a doctored version of the picture on the mayor’s Web site.
Holden acknowledged he did suffer a black eye last year when he tripped over a piece of carpet, but noted he did not get a busted lip from the accident.
The mailer claims the woman’s husband punched Holden in the mouth and eye, and police have refused to serve as his bodyguard “on moral grounds and a strong belief that someone is going to get injured or worse, die.”
THE NEWSPAPER, truth be told, sanitized the story quite a bit. It didn't even touch the miscegenation angle, which the political mailer most certainly did -- including a photo of the black mayor and the white woman in question. Here's some purple prose directly from the "reverend's" word processor:
Pulling his pants up with one hand, grabbing his expensive alligator shoes with the other, Mayor Melvin "Kip" Holden ran from the residence, but not before a 5' 10" Caucasian man punched him in the eye and mouth (see picture). A reliable source reported seeing the Mayor's mouth bleeding as he hurried to a black Lincoln with a public license plate.
Standing in the door of his residence the man watched the Lincoln speed away driven by the mayor's bodyguard, an on duty Baton Rouge police officer. With tears in his eyes, he turned and stared at his nude spouse.
EXPENSIVE alligator shoes.
Caucasian man, tears in eyes.
Nude spouse.
You didn't see any of that ugliness in The Advocate's "mainstream" reportage. Nor did the paper point out the staggering irony of it all -- the political opponent Holden suspects is responsible for the flier is . . . black.
Holden said the allegations are ridiculous, and are obviously the handiwork of one of his opponents in the mayor’s race and their operatives.
“I have had the same four police officers with me since I took office. The only one that is no longer working with me is Eugene Smith, who said he needed additional time with his family after his father was killed in an accident,” Holden said.
Holden said criminal charges may be filed as a result of the smear tactic. He said he’s contacted the state Attorney General’s Office and the FBI.
Because the mailer was sent via U.S. mail and contained false information, federal mail fraud charges could be pending against the perpetrators, Holden said.
Holden also suggested that Metro Councilman Byron Sharper may be involved because he called the mayor’s office earlier this week and warned that “we’re going to drop a bomb on you.”
Sharper could not be reached for comment Friday afternoon.
In a statement issued Friday afternoon, Holden said Metro Councilman Sharper’s brother, Kurt, has distributed the fliers in public buildings.
“We have provided his identity to law enforcement as a source of information and involvement,” Holden said in the statement.
PERHAPS SOMEBODY'S trying to get both white men and black women mad at the mayor. I mean . . . y'think?
Then, to throw in a red flag for all the fire-breathers among the Religious Right, the smear piece declares, ostensibly unironically:
The FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL, THE LOUISIANA FAMILY FORUM, Local Ministers, and the Metro Council recently defeated Mayor Holden's attempt to pass a blanket declaration as to Baton Rouge being a sanctuary for homosexuals through his One Baton Rouge resolution. Please join with us in demanding legal and moral conduct from our public officials.
YOU BET,podna. Pleas for legal and moral rectitude in a sleazy, racist flier allegedly produced by black pols stooping to Kluxer tactics against a black mayor. Only in Louisiana. . . .
Only in Louisiana, dammit. Isn't anyone down there the least bit ashamed yet of what they tolerate and who they vote into office? Anyone? Anyone?
I tried Schlitz again after many, many years because it's cheap, and inflation is rampant. I still drink it because it ain't half bad -- just like 35 years ago when I used to ask the old man for a sip, then down half the can.
It's the beer that made Milwaukee famous. Now Schlitz is making the city nostalgic.
That beer with the old-time mystique is back on shelves in bottles of its original formula in the city where it was first brewed more than a century and a half ago.
Schlitz was the top-selling beer for much of the first half of the 20th century. But recipe changes and a series of snafus made the beer — in many a drinkers' opinion — undrinkable, turning what was once the world's most popular brews into little more than a joke.
But after decades of dormancy, the beer is back.
Schlitz' owner, Pabst Brewing Co., is recreating the old formula, using notes and interviews with old brew masters to concoct the pilsner again. The maker of another nostalgic favorite, Pabst Blue Ribbon, it hopes baby boomers will reach for the drink of their youth, otherwise known as "The Beer That Made Milwaukee Famous." They also want to create a following among younger drinkers who want to know what grandma and grandpa drank.
"We believe that Schlitz is if not the, one of most iconic brands of the 20th century," said Kevin Kotecki, president of Pabst Brewing Co., which bought the brand that dates to 1849 from Stroh's in 1999. "And there's still a lot of people who have very positive, residual memories about their experience. For many of them it was the first beer they drank and we wanted to give it back to those consumers."
In Milwaukee, the comeback is creating a buzz. Stores are depleted of their stock within days, they're taking names for waiting lists and limiting customers to just a few six- or 12-packs each.
People like Leonard Jurgensen say the beer reminds them of better days. The 67-year-old, who grew up on the edge of the brewery downtown, said decades ago it seemed that everyone in the city either worked for the brewery or knew someone who did. If there was a special occasion, you drank Schlitz. Jurgensen had it on his wedding day 45 years ago.
"For many years the product was associated with happy times, especially to people my age," said Jurgensen, who's writing a book on Milwaukee's breweries. "As we all know, the world is not the best it can be today. We used to think those were hard times and when we look back on them, those were the good old days."
BECAUSE, TRULY . . . "When you're out of Schlitz, you're out of beer."
Now, if Schlitz can make a big comeback . . . maybe the other beer of my youth, Dixie, will do it, too. I think I've just made myself thirsty.
What if the glorious "heritage" you were taught to take pride in was, instead, a more compelling case for intense shame?
WHAT DO YOU MAKE of that? If you -- if your region and culture -- have been held captive by a defining historical lie, how do you make peace with the present and move on to the future?
Intrigued? You should be. It's a hell of a question, and we meditate upon it through some great -- and diverse -- music this week.
Of course, in addition to the seriousness, we have a lot of fun, too. That's because the Big Show is the place where you never know what's going to be thrown at you next. Every song an adventure, I say.
And you'll be saying that, too.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, and you can listen right now, right here. Be there. Aloha.
UPDATE: You did know that the show is available on iTunes, right? Just go to podcasts and search for 3 Chords & the Truth. It's as simple as that, and you can become a subscriber.
I MEAN, "They invited the 'Chocolate Rain' guy to, like, go sing at some YouTube event in, like, China."
But no such "cewebrity" luuuuv for Mr. (Miss?) Leave Britney Alone! Such shabby treatment.
"I'm not mama- and papa-friendly, I understand. Mamas and papas don't like me, but guess what? Their kids do," he/she/it says. "I'm a voice of this generation . . .I'm a voice of this generation, and there's no stopping me."
Contrary to all appearances, this was not Colombia . . . or Nicaragua . . . or El Salvador . . . or Cuba . . . or Hugo Chavez's Venezuela.
NO, THIS WAS the Louisiana into which I was born -- or removed by just a very few years from the Louisiana into which I was born. Folks thought they were getting the moon.
By the time the grafting pols and their cronies had skimmed theirs off the top, we ordinary Louisianians more or less ended up with a Moon Pie. It's funny how many of the people you can fool for so much of the time.
Moving to the United States some decades ago was something of a culture shock.Cognitive dissonance are I.
Former Louisiana secretary of state -- and former insurance commissioner -- Jim Brown asks an odd rhetorical question on a blog post this morning. Odd because the answer is so obvious that it doesn't even beg a question, rhetorical or otherwise.
Brown, on the cleverly named Jim Brown Blog, wants to know:
Louisiana State Senator Derrick Shepherd gets in a tussle with his girlfriend over the weekend and he's hauled off to federal court. Is there any violation of the law that is not considered a federal offense? If anyone actually takes the time to read the U.S. Constitution, there are only three crimes specifically enumerated. Treason, piracy and counterfeiting. So why has Congress undertaken an overzealous expansion of criminal laws?
A report from the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies recently determined that there are some 4500 federal crimes listed in the US Code.It used to be that Congress would create one particular crime by passing a new law.But in recent years, multiple crimes are listed within the same statute.One new law enacted right after 9/11 contained 60 new crimes.Were they really necessary?
Our representatives in Washington now want to delve into any number of local crimes, flaunting the intention of our country's founders.Drugs, robbery, car theft, the list goes on and on.What happened to the 14th amendment and states rights?
NO, IF SHEPHERD slapped around his girlfriend, that would not, per se, be a federal crime.
But getting arrested is a violation of the terms on which Shepherd was released by the federal court as the senator awaits his federal trial on fraud and conspiracy charges. Of the federal variety.
Funny how that works, huh?
Having grown up in the 1960s and '70s, I remember that NORML used to be quite the deal. You know, NORML -- the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. Basically, what you had was a bunch of heads who couldn't stay off weed, so they sought to repeal the laws that said you couldn't smoke the ganja, mon.
Apparently, what we have in Louisiana is a state full of pols -- and pols' crooked cronies -- who just can't stay off the graft, mon. And if everybody's doing it . . . why do it gots to be a federal offense?
Mon.
Or, to put some lipstick on a porker of an argument, Brown concludes:
In 400 B.C., the Greek orator Isocrates stated: "Where there is a multitude of specific laws, it is a sign that the state is badly governed." Tasedus wrote in the 1st century A.D. of Rome: “Formerly we suffered from crimes. Now we suffer from laws."
UHHHHH . . . that would be Tacitus. Publius Cornelius Tacitus.
Add education to the list of things in Louisiana that ought to be a federal crime.
The spoof below comes from the best thing since The Onion -- a website called Not the Los Angeles Times. And it is just that, a joke.
Actually, there still are a few employees at the Los Angeles Times, and at many other American newspapers.
BUT IT'S STILL only halfway through the week. Monday, this might not be funny anymore . . . so, for those reading this next Tuesday, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend.
With that said, however. . . .
For the 23rd time in 18 months, the Los Angeles Times is losing its top editor. Raul Jones, a former newsroom janitor who rose through the ranks as layoffs shrank the number of real journalists, was fired yesterday after refusing to lay off the paper's last employee – himself.
In a blistering farewell e-mail sent to himself, Jones defended his stance against further cuts. "I had to draw the line," he wrote. "It's one thing to sack everybody else, but I can't countenance my own dismissal. Who's going to cover city and state government, the war in Iraq and Britney Spears? The quality of the paper will suffer."
But Tribune Co. spokesman Randy Michaels said the paper would do just fine, thanks to sophisticated new software that rewrites wire-service stories in the style of former Times reporters.
"We analyzed past articles and found that 38% of all stories began with the writer mentioning the time of day," Michaels said. [Click here for recent examples.] "Our new software will duplicate that formula."
As Michaels spoke, cleaning crews swept through the Times' newsroom, removing cobwebs and tearing down Xeroxed portraits of former publisher Mark Willes, whose smiling face had been plastered all over the building by reporters nostalgic for the "good old days."
Removing editor Jones wasn't easy. Because he was the paper's last employee and wouldn't dismiss himself, Tribune executives had to find a replacement editor from Chicago who was willing to can Jones and then promptly resign.
COME TO THINK OF IT, none of this is very funny at all. That's because, truly, what we see as a knee slapper today is what corporate media bean counters see as reality . . . tomorrow.
If you're a woman, where's the last place on earth you'd want to be when an earthquake hit?
YEP. And where's the last place you'd want your OB/GYN to -- ahem -- be when the earthquake hit? From Twitter:
First earthquake paper gown, legs in stirrups about 3 hours ago from mobile web
I am totally serious. My Ob/Gyn was IN my vagina and an earthquake started rattling the room! about 3 hours ago from mobile web
Good news, vagina is healthy, albeit shaken up. about 3 hours ago from mobile web
My Ob/Gyn said it was OK if I didn't want to evacuate to the parking lot in my paper gown. I was more concerned about the speculum. about 3 hours ago from mobile web
What a way to go. about 3 hours ago from mobile web
But what really gets your attention in the bright light are two stainless steel hooks - big enough for deep-sea fishing - pierced into his upper back.
A heavy-duty cord connects to the eyelet on each hook. With a mountaineering rope and four pulleys, a man hoists Dalton off the floor, his hooked skin stretching as he rises.
HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE THINGS happened to Iraqi detainees at the hands of their American interrogators at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. But this, from the pages of the Sunday World-Herald, is not a story of that. Nor is it a tale of some of the more horrific violations of the Geneva Conventions at the U.S. detainee camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The actual scene: A recent Sunday at an Omaha tattoo parlor:
The practice is called suspension, and several dozen people have tried it at a Bellevue tattoo shop, Dr. Jack's Ink Emporium.
Despite potential health risks, including infection, suspension is becoming more common across the country. But it's far from mainstream, and remains a fringe activity.
Suspension is not entirely new; some Native American tribes practiced a form of it in the 1800s and earlier as a rite of passage for young men.
Dalton and others do it to prove they can withstand the pain, giving them a sense of control over body and mind. They like the feel-good kick when their bodies release endorphins - narcotic-like hormones - in response to the pain, as well as the relaxed feeling when they are done.
And some like "performing" for the dozen or more people watching at the tattoo studio.
In an era when soccer moms have tattoos and teens have steel studs in their tongues, suspension is a way to stand out.
On a recent Sunday evening, more than 30 people watched Dalton and three others suspend at Dr. Jack's. (snip) Dalton, 34, lay on his stomach on a padded table. Monte Vogel, general manager of the four Omaha-area Dr. Jack's shops, holds one hook. Mike Coons, a Dr. Jack's manager, holds the other.
The hooks gleam.
The sharp end of each hook is inserted into a hollow needle about 2 inches long. Vogel and Coons, wearing black latex gloves, pull up handfuls of Dalton's skin and, with a smooth motion, slip in a needle and hook, one on the right side of his upper back, the other on the left.
He doesn't flinch.
"Like a champ," Coons says.
"Always," says Dalton, who has suspended four times in the past nine months, each time hooked in his upper back.
DEVOTEES OF SUSPENSION pay Dr. Mengele'sDr. Jack's $100 a session for a few minutes of carefree swinging. From massive hooks run through them like a tarpon at the end of a 30-pound test line.
Dalton had it rough as a kid. He says he was physically abused and spent several years in foster homes. The abuse, he says, gave him a tolerance for pain.
He said that after a stint in the Army, he became an electrician and mechanic. He has always loved art and took pottery and painting classes in high school. One of his favorite pieces: a dragon perched atop a mountain.
Dalton tapped that background when he became a Dr. Jack's tattooer about a year ago.
With the wood floors, off-white walls and bright lights, the room where Dalton suspends looks like a small dance studio.
The shop's owners designed it solely for suspension. A wall of glass allows people to watch from padded benches in the shop's main room.
Dalton, wearing long plaid shorts and a black cap, leans slightly forward when it's time.
Vogel attaches parachute cords to the hooks' eyelets, then connects the other end of the cords to a steel bar rigged to the rope and pulleys.
A Dr. Jack's employee pulls the rope slightly, and Dalton's hooked skin stretches. As Dalton is gradually pulled up, only the balls of his feet touch the floor; then, only his toe tips. The employee pulls the rope a little more and Dalton is suspended, his feet dangling a few inches above the floor.
Dalton doesn't scream or moan.
The crowd quietly watches through the window.
Dalton feels the pressure of the hooks pulling his skin and a slight numbness in his upper back. He's feeling high, like a distance runner who is in good stride and past the point of pain.
He's looking forward, his arms dangling. Music from Clutch, a heavy blues-rock band, pumps into his head through earphones.
Dalton pushes off the glass wall with his legs, causing his body to swing. With each push, the arc of his swing increases.
His heart beats faster. He doesn't feel any pain.
He looks like a skateboarder as he zips from one side of the room to the other. He knows the crowd wants to see more than just someone hanging. They want action.
"Getting close to 15 (minutes)," a Dr. Jack's employee calls out.
Dalton swings a while longer before the crew lets him down, to the applause of the crowd. He had suspended about 20 minutes.
WHY IS IT that any "enhanced interrogation" Bush, Cheney & Co. performs on Arab wretches in the name of "freedom" and "security" comes as shock to us at all, here in the American heartland? It's no more than what we do to ourselves . . . for our own "tortured" reasons and to overwhelm a gnawing pain that's worse than any giant fish hook protruding from our flesh.
Or was that a meat hook?
Ryan Schoultz, a 20-year-old cook, is tan and polite and talks with a Southern accent. His wife is there to take pictures.
He has hung once before, from his back. This time, it's from the chest. More of a challenge.
As he's lifted, his skin tears slightly. He doesn't feel pain but he hears his skin rip. The crew lets him down so the skin won't tear more.
Schoultz vows to try it again -- but not this night.
THE BARBARIANS are no longer at the gate. If there's a fundamental difference between us and tattooed Amazon headhunters with bones sticking through their lips and noses, I fail to apprehend what that might be any longer.
On the other hand, I readily grasp the difference between Saddam Hussein and ourselves. Saddam had the good sense never to torture himself. Or at least never pay $100 for the "privilege."
One question: How long before some Bush Administration official dredges up this little story from Omaha, Neb., as a defense exhibit at a war-crimes trial? Is what I'm asking.
National Public Radio's excellent experiment, The Bryant Park Project, now belongs to history.
The alternative morning program for public-radio listeners -- and the 24/7, multiplatform "New Media" effort surrounding it -- gave up the ghost Friday as its staff said goodbye to listeners and, a few hours later, its website became a cyberghost town.
Its Twitter feed ceased tweeting.
AND A NUMBER of NPR affiliates began the process of putting something else on their digital subchannels -- new programming that likewise will go unheard by an HD Radio-free listening public.
NPR executives will survey the carnage and declare -- actually, already have declared -- The Bryant Park Project a failure. A noble effort that never really got off the ground, never gained an audience, never developed into the digital answer for a public broadcaster faced with upcoming generations who are rejecting radio for the Interwebs and their iPods.
Obviously, The Bryant Park Project had turned into a luxury NPR no longer thought it could afford. And that's pretty much where we stand, here in the besieged trenches of traditional, mainstream media.
The Digital Huns have battalions of radio men and newspapermen (and women) pinned down, audience reinforcements are not forthcoming and the commanders have been told that supplies and ammo are starting to run desperately short. What to do?
Obviously, given the dire circumstances, only one thing. Stop probing for a way out . . . somebody could get killed out there.
Far better that Her Majesty's media starve en masse than have someone get picked off by a Facebook sniper while probing enemy lines.
REALLY, ONLY THEONIONcould do justice to the ongoing story of the print and broadcast media's utter fecklessness and timidity in the face of the "New Media" challenge. For once, it wouldn't have to make this s*** up.
In canceling the BPP, interim NPR chief Dennis Haarsager said the program failed because, among other reasons, "Web/podcasting usage was also hampered . . . since we were offering an 'appointment program' in a medium that doesn't excel in that kind of usage."
I realize I am just a Philistine -- a Schlitz-drinking ruffian with an Interwebs account and not enough sense to be running a fine organization like NPR into the ground -- but I thought this (Whadda youse call it again?) "podcasting" thing was all about "appointment" listening.
See, here's the deal: We get to set the appointment time. We can listen whenever we want.
And it seems to me that -- since the NPR media player delivered the program in segments -- it would be simple enough to update the newscasts hourly . . . or any segment if it became horribly dated before the next full program aired. (Then again, I wouldn't know about these fancy technological paté-and-quiche doomaflatchies what NPR has. I have been known to drink Schlitz and wipe my nose on my sleeve.)
I guess there just must be some fundamental disconnect between BPP listeners who saw -- and heard -- a witty, informative and well-put-together multimedia effort and NPR suits who saw nothing but roadblocks on the road to the Digital Future.
The thing is, if you have exemplary content that an audience desires, what's a little roadblock other than something you'll bypass soon enough? What can't be as easily bypassed is the kind of organizational nincompoopery that launches a major programming-and-Internet initiative, fails to gain clearance on more than five analog radio signals and 19 digital-radio subchannels, doesn't promote it, then kills that major initiative because not enough people listened.
Item 1: NPR only managed to get its major New Media project on five lousy affiliates when there must be dozens where the BPP would have been a far better programming fit than Morning Edition. Oh yeah, the show was on a satellite-radio channel, too.
Item 2: 19 HD Radio subchannels basically work out to zero listeners. How many of you out there have HD radios? How many of you out there can find one in a store? How many of you out there even know somebody with an HD radio? I rest my case.
Item 3: Launching a major programming-and-Internet initiative, failing to gain clearance on more than five analog radio signals, 19 digital-radio subchannels and one satellite-radio channel, not promoting it, then killing that major initiative because not enough people listened is the craziest thing I've seen in radio since my program director AT A CATHOLIC RADIO STATION wanted to buy a station Humvee and paint it in camo "to represent the Church Militant."
I am not making this up. Neither could The Onion.
AS I'VE WRITTEN BEFORE, it seems to me The Bryant Park Project was a success by any programming benchmark. It was fresh, it informed and -- in the two weeks I got to know it before NPR pulled the plug -- it made me laugh.
Come on, what's the last NPR program that made you laugh?
Perhaps, however, the BPP's greatest success was in creating a virtual community out of a few over-the-air listeners here, some Sirius satellite listeners there and a bunch of online listeners over yonder. By design, Bryant Park Project hosts and staffers lifted the veil between faceless public-radio program and the listener driving to work . . . or sitting at his computer at work . . . or eating breakfast . . . or, perhaps, sitting in a room -- alone -- and feeling friendless.
Old media, new media, multischmedia . . . NPR's "new kind of news program" did a very old-school thing. It made a human connection. It created community, which ought to be something even the most addle-minded radio executive can understand on some level.
Community. We humans crave it, but less and less manage to achieve it.
We moderns don't do church so much anymore. Neither do we know our neighbors, nor are we the club-joiners we once were.
I'll bet it's been decades since there was a schoolyard standoff between devotees of Color Radio W and Boss Radio X. Why? Because young people don't listen anymore.
Why? Because Corporate MegaRadio, Inc., has turned radio into a gigantic, flavorless, excitement- and community-free cluster. . . never mind.
THE BRYANT PARK PROJECT was breaking that unfortunate mold. It had turned its tiny corner of the electromagnetic spectrum once again into a communications medium. Listeners -- and readers -- got involved with the program. They submitted story ideas. They pointed staffers in more profitable directions on a story or two.
What a concept in modern communications -- an organic community of media providers and media consumers. The BPP created one. For its trouble, it got canceled before anyone reasonably could tell how the experiment would turn out.
Maybe this is the real experiment. What happens when the corporate gatekeepers lose control of their creation? How does it work when listeners refuse to let a cherished program -- or station -- slip into oblivion?
What are the ramifications for the media landscape -- both "new" and "old" -- then?
But perhaps the biggest question centers on why any media provider -- broadcast or print -- would refuse to embrace means of communication that turned mere media consumers into members of "the family"? Why would you bring people into your paper's . . . or station's . . . or network's life, then kick them to the curb before anyone had a chance to spill red wine on the couch or "forget" to return that chainsaw they borrowed last summer?
Why would you do that?
Whatsa matter? You don't like people or somethin'?
A biology professor at a Minnesota university has followed through on his threat to desecrate an allegedly consecrated communion host and a copy of the Koran. THE ABOVE PHOTO, from P.Z. Myers' blog, shows what the University of Minnesota-Morris faculty member did to what is most sacred to Catholics and Muslims -- to what Catholics believe is the Body of Christ and to what Islam holds as the literal word of Allah:
OK, time for the anticlimax. I know some of you have proposed intricate plans for how to do horrible things to these crackers, but I repeat…it's just a cracker. I wasn't going to make any major investment of time, money, or effort in treating these dabs of unpleasantness as they deserve, because all they deserve is casual disposal. However, inspired by an old woodcut of Jews stabbing the host, I thought of a simple, quick thing to do: I pierced it with a rusty nail (I hope Jesus's tetanus shots are up to date). And then I simply threw it in the trash, followed by the classic, decorative items of trash cans everywhere, old coffeegrounds and a banana peel. My apologies to those who hoped for more, but the worst I can do is show my unconcerned contempt.
By the way, I didn't want to single out just the cracker, so I nailed it to a few ripped-out pages from the Qur'an and The God Delusion. They are just paper. Nothing must be held sacred. Question everything. God is not great, Jesus is not your lord, you are not disciples of any charismatic prophet. You are all human beings who must make your way through your life by thinking and learning, and you have the job of advancing humanity's knowledge by winnowing out the errors of past generations and finding deeper understanding of reality. You will not find wisdom in rituals and sacraments and dogma, which build only self-satisfied ignorance, but you can find truth by looking at your world with fresh eyes and a questioning mind.
MYERS' ACTIONS belie his words. If the Eucharist really is just a "fraggin' cracker" and the Koran is just bound pieces of paper -- if there is no power in those things, or in peoples' belief in them -- why bother desecrating them?
In a land of intellectual freedom, have not people the right to their "delusions," so long as they remain peacefully deceived? According to the First Amendment and to international human-rights conventions, don't religious believers have the right to practice their faiths in peace?
If so, what is the point of Myers' actions, other than sheer hatefulness and incitement?
If, as the pathetic professor professes, he sees no metaphysical value to a consecrated host or a Muslim holy book, isn't his only point to broadcast his violent hatred of the faithful? In other words, what this 51-year-old (going on 14) college professor is all about is disturbing the peace.
I wonder whether one of Myers' students -- as he stumbled out of a college watering hole -- could get away with pissing on the sidewalk and harassing gay couples if only he possessed the rhetorical sophistication to couch his bad behavior as "freedom of expression."
After all, if the university administration can defend an employee's "hate speech" (and "hate actions") against religious groups and their sacred objects -- remember, Myers holds "nothing must be held sacred" and is willing to go to some length to act on that belief -- what's so "sacred" about un-pissed-upon walkways . . . or gay couples?
Or any couple? Or any law? Or any concept around which society organizes itself?
What, then, is so damned sacred about P.Z. Myers?
IF MINNESOTA-MORRIS can't bring itself to discipline an employee who shows aggressive contempt toward society, its members and public order, what won't it tolerate, then? If desecrating the Eucharist and mutilating a Koran, then publicizing the abuse don't represent "fighting words,"then what does?
Indeed, if "nothing must be held sacred," what is so sacred about this overgrown 14-year-old brat's job?
This edition of 3 Chords & the Truthcame into conceptual being with a blog post by someone who was a few years behind me at Baton Rouge Magnet High.
TRANSLATION:Back in the day.
Anyway, this young lady -- and any woman younger than me is a "young lady," because I ain't old . . . I don't think -- had been searching for a copy of the U.S. Times' "Wanna Go to London" LP for, oh . . . 26 years.
And I just happen to have a mint copy, bought at my second home when I was a student at Louisiana State University. That would be Leisure Landing, the fabulous independent record store that lay just off campus.
Naturally, Leisure Landing is no more . . . like most of the great record stores.
Anyway, I was able to hook Diane up with a pristine digital copy of my pristine vinyl record. Free of charge. The record Nazis might be able to get me on a lot of stuff, but they ain't gonna get me for out-and-out piracy.
You know what I'm sayin'?
Thing is, Cap, that got me to thinkin' about old days, and music, and how fortunate many of us were to be drunkhard-studying, model college students when the punk and New Wave scene was happenin' in a town not usually associated with artistic ferment.
There was some good music going on in Red Stick back in the day, let me tell 'ya.
DOES THIS POST have a point? How about, "Let's take a trip to Back in the Day and listen to some old school garage, punk and New Wave"?
Or, how about "If you're from where I'm from, when I was from it, listen to the Big Show and be transported to a time when we bitched about how the suits ruined 'FMF and we clung to the low-wattage signals of WBRH and WPRG for dear life . . . for that is from whence The Music came"?
Alternatively, perhaps the point of this post -- aside from a middle-age man's nostalgic leanings -- is meant to be instructive to a younger generation. A reminder that all new things rarely are as new as we'd like to think.
"Indie" came from somewhere . . . and this is as good a place as any to start looking.
WHATEVER THE POINT -- assuming there is one here -- just check out the latest 3 Chords & the Truthand listen to some righteous music.
