Society: Hipster Subculture Ripe for Parody – TIME

December 2, 2009 Karma 17 Comments

Time Magazines example of Hipsters. Lets find these people and piss on their shoes! Who cares if they look nothing like a hipster? Lets go be hateful! — Time Magazine's example of Hipsters. Clearly, these freakish aliens are nothing like you and I! Let's go piss on their shoes!

Yes, I am harping on this one again. I wouldn’t be, if someone hadn’t sent me a link to this article in Time under the subject heading “Well stated.” Below is my point-by-point response.

Society: Hipster Subculture Ripe for Parody – TIME.

Hipsters are the friends who sneer when you cop to liking Coldplay. They’re the people who wear T-shirts silk-screened with quotes from movies you’ve never heard of and the only ones in America who still think Pabst Blue Ribbon is a good beer.

MESSAGE: It is not possible that someone might have legitimately liked a movie that you’ve never heard of. Make fun of them. If you see someone drinking Pabst, make fun of them. Do not bother to ask them about their t-shirt or why they like that particular beer. You have all the information you need to wish that they would get evicted from their homes (no really, that’s how the article ends).

They sport cowboy hats and berets and think Kanye West stole their sunglasses. Everything about them is exactingly constructed to give off the vibe that they just don’t care.

Berets and cowboy hats are not “hipster-ironic” fashionable. They are actually fashionable. As in, featured in regular department stores and sported by regular pop stars. Nothing “hipster” about it. So basically, anyone wearing a stylish hat is a hipster? Already in paragraph one and I’m questioning whether she knows what she is talking about. Nor do I see how wearing a trendy hat is a sign that one “just doesn’t care.”

Annoying, yes, but harmless, right?

Annoying? We should all be annoyed at someone’s choice of sunglasses or hat? No, actually, I don’t find it annoying that someone wears a cowboy hat and drinks inexpensive beer. I find it exceedingly annoying that someone else would make a big deal out of that fact.

Not to hear their critics tell it. Hipsters manage to attract a loathing unique in its intensity. Critics have described the loosely defined group as smug, full of contradictions and, ultimately, the dead end of Western civilization.

Shamelessly hotlinking this from the Adbusters article she sites, which is even more absurdly offensive than this one.

Riiiiight. The psuedo-neutral tone of this article is aggravating. SHE’s not passing judgment on these people. She’s just pointing out that some people do. When the author will go on to imply that all hipsters are living off their parents, that they are annoying and shallow, and have no original ideas, she is merely passing on the beliefs of everyone else.

Though the subculture is met with derision in wider society, hipsters have been able to eke out enclaves across the country, chief among them the Brooklyn, N.Y., neighborhood of Williamsburg. But now even that is threatened. The hip have been hit with a double whammy of economic reality (more are struggling to pay rent as parental support dries up) and population changes (the carefully gentrified neighborhood is gradually being infiltrated by squatters inhabiting Williamsburg’s stalled building projects). Hipsterdom’s largest natural habitat, it seems, is under threat.

Note the implicit assumption that people who drink a particular beer and wear a particular hat are all trust-fund babies. Don’t let that assumption slip by you.

Though the irony-sporting, status quo–abhorring, plaid-clad denizens of Williamsburg are a distinctly modern species, the hipster as a genus has its roots in the 1930s and ’40s. The name itself was coined after the jazz age, when hip arose to describe aficionados of the growing scene…

Hipsters were usually middle-class white youths seeking to emulate the lifestyle of the largely-black jazz musicians they followed. But the subculture grew, and after World War II, a burgeoning literary scene attached itself to the movement: Jack Kerouac and poet Allen Ginsberg were early hipsters, but it would be Norman Mailer who would try and give the movement definition. In an essay titled “The White Negro,” Mailer painted hipsters as American existentialists, living a life surrounded by death — annihilated by atomic war or strangled by social conformity — and electing instead to “divorce oneself from society, to exist without roots, to set out on that uncharted journey into the rebellious imperatives of the self.” As the first hipster generation aged, it was replaced by the etymologically diminutive hippies, who appropriated their fears about the Cold War but embraced the community over the individual.

The word would fade for years until it was reborn in the early ’90s, used again to describe a generation of middle-class youths interested in an alternative art and music scene. But instead of creating a culture of their own, hipsters proved content to borrow from trends long past. Take your grandmother’s sweater and Bob Dylan’s Wayfarers, add jean shorts, Converse All-Stars and a can of Pabst and bam — hipster.

Apparently when the flapper-hipsters emulated black music, they were “aficionados.” When the beatnik-hipster emulated black music, they were “existentialists.” When the hippies became the counter-culture, they were anti-Cold War activists. But now that a new generation of youth emulates their past, they are shallow. The double-talk here is astounding.

Nevermind that the flappers, beatniks and hippies were all labeled as shallow in their own time. It is only in hindsight that we see the value of the bohemian artists. But here the author fails to see the chain of history in action, tricked by giving the Bohemian a new name and a new hat. Now she is saying that she respects Bohemians, just not THOSE Bohemians, you know, the ones that are actually relevant at this point in time.

Borrowing from trends long past is neither distinctive nor abhorrent. That’s all that fashion IS. Show me a fashion trend that is not “borrowing” from what came before. Moreover, if they are all borrowing from the same things, that shows value: clearly if a large group of people are all wearing their grandmother’s sweaters, they see a common value in it.

Overall, the people that I see that are commonly described by the H-word do have a common value with their fashion choices in that their thrift store finds are part of a common belief in anti-consumerism. Maybe they don’t feel the need to explain that to every person that walks down the street.

…Some of this ridicule is a bit unfair. As stores like Urban Outfitters have mass-produced hipster chic, hipsterdom has become a part of mainstream culture, overshadowing its originators’ still-strong alternative art and music scene. Those people, of course, no longer identify as hipsters, but they’re not the problem.

Wait, so the author is freely admitting that, like every counterculture, the aesthetic of the “alternative art and music scene” has been co-opted by corporate America, but it is not the phonies who are shopping at Urban Outfitters who are “the problem”? The REAL artists shop at Urban Outfitters and the poor schmucks who can only afford to drink Pabst and shop at Goodwill are the menace to society? WTF?!

And please tell me where in this article it explains why these people are a “problem”? This is the assumption slipping by again: we all agree that hipsters are a problem, but what is a hipster? seems to be the perplexing gist of it. The only annoyance and problem I see here is the continuing desire to ostracize strangers for belonging to a counterculture.

The hipsters who will be the dead end of Western Civilization are the ones who add nothing new or original and simply recycle and reduce old trends into a meaningless meme. It’s for that reason that when Williamsburg’s hipster playland is in crisis, there aren’t many who are concerned.

Right, nothing personal against them, we just all hope that they get evicted and go live somewhere else. But you know, only the Meaningless Meme ones! Those other bohemians, who look just like hipsters, they’re ok!

This is the crux of the matter. It is not socially acceptable to cast aspersions on artists, punks, hippies, ravers or bohemians of any kind. Fake bohemians, on the other hand are open season. But the beginning of this article shows a photo of New Yorkers who, for reasons that are inexplicable to me, are described as “hipsters.” Do we have any evidence that the people here are shallow? That their mothers pay their rent? That they are snobs?

Of course not. But because they have been labeled with the dreaded H-bomb, it is now ok to assume that they are the scum of society, and snobby at that. They are not real human beings enjoying a day in the park, who can now look forward to seeing themselves ridiculed in Time Magazine. They are cartoon villains.

I’ve been told that my logic is circular on this subject because I am defending real bohemians, and the hipsters are the fakes. But it is actually the opposite. Any time I point to someone that fits all of the external descriptions but is neither dependent nor shallow, I am told that those people aren’t really hipsters. My friend who drinks $3 Pabst tall-boys at the Indie nightclub and plays kroquet isn’t a hipster because she’s a feminist lobbyist. My friend who wears leg warmers and mismatched clothes is not a hipster because she is a freelance journalist getting her masters at Columbia. My friend who knows every person that works at the Stork Club in Oakland is not a hipster because she’s just a sweet little school teacher, and besides she listens to Brittany Spears, and I don’t mean ironically. Supposedly, I am not a hipster because I am neither snobby nor mean-spirited and I am (unironically, overbearingly) sincere. One will mistake my vintage Meatloaf t-shirt for some kind of ironic statement. But no—I got the shirt when I saw him in concert as a preteen. Once you get to know them, none of these people are shallow and they all pay their own bills. The list goes on and on: anywhere you point to the hipster, get a little closer and the stereotype evaporates under even the slightest scrutiny. Like all stereotypes, really.

But this is the argument: those people aren’t hipsters! The hipsters are the ones who look exactly like those people that I don’t know personally! The hipsters are “the ones who add nothing new or original and simply recycle and reduce old trends into a meaningless meme”! Fine, ok, you’re not generalizing people by the way they look at all! And when I hear someone describe a “hipster bar” or a “hipster coffee shop” or a “hipster neighborhood,” every single person inside that bar/shop/zip code is worthy of the derision of the masses? No, no, just lots of them. Which ones, then? That one, carrying a messenger bag and wearing a Cloud Cult t-shirt! Then we are back to judging them by the way they look, not based on who they are or their actions.

I suppose we could go into Ritual in the *Mission and ask every man in tight pants why he rides a fixie, drinks Ritual coffee, wears a messenger bag, and how much of his rent is supplied by his parents. But what fun would that be? Where’s the hate—er, fun—in that?

For the record, I have not met a single person that lives in the Mission that has access to any kind of a trust fund. Nor do I know any who sport the hipster look who shop at designer clothing stores. And, yes, I know tons of people that drink Pabst: no one is claiming it’s better than Tetley’s or Boddingtons. But it is much better than any other beer you can get for three bucks. Next time you want to give me shit for it, you best be buying me a Guiness.

My response to this article (and the dozens like it) is, essentially, fuck you. Fuck you for judging people who wear used clothes and support local businesses. Fuck you for judging people because they love art that you’ve never heard of. Fuck you for judging people based on their zip code. These people have done nothing to you and your sense of superiority is mean-spirited, short-sighted and shallow. Yes, shallow. This country is fighting two wars, recession, environmental collapse and cut-backs in all social services and you want to waste paper bitching about Brooklyn kids who wear skinny jeans? FUCK YOU. And the pitchfork-wielding, Polo-wearing mob you rolled in on.

*Ground zero for West Coast hipsters

All, Books, Writing, Publishing, Writers, Writing

One Writer’s Process II

November 29, 2009 Karma 6 Comments

My apartment is a disaster. There are dishes scattered about, paper strewn, twice-worn clothes in a heap. My ass has been reshaped into the form of the cushion, and it hurts. My shoulders are killing me. I’m sick of listening to music.

“No! Take it back!” you say. For I am never sick of listening to music, as you, dear reader, probably know by now.

But I have been sitting in this same spot, listening to music and staring at this novel for the last twelve hours. I had determined that a four-day weekend was plenty of time to finish the ten scenes that I haven’t been able to find the time to write for the last ten months.

OK, to be fair, I did write some of them. But writing scenes inspires a need to write more scenes, so no matter how much I wrote the conclusion of the novel seemed at least ten scenes away.

Believe it or not, in those twelve hours I got very little writing done. Hardly a page.

Instead, something even better happened. It was like a gift from my fairy godmother!

Where the writing happens, only much filthier

I had been miffed at myself of late. I had had plenty of good ideas for character, dialog, description (etc.) and not taken the time to get those ideas down. Then when I wanted to go write them later, of course the words didn’t take shape quite as easily.

I thought because I had been keeping up with entering the changes in my edited drafts, that I had most of the hand-written scenes entered.

I was wrong. I was so wrong.

Turns out those good ideas had been put to paper. I decided to go through every journal I have used since I started the novel and finally type in every last scrap of anything that I had hand-written but not entered into the draft yet. We are talking eight journals and assorted random pieces of paper. They were sentence fragments on legal pads, plotpoints in margins, conflict and dialog written sideways on notes from work meetings, whole scenes in journals I was sure would have nothing but diary entries cataloging various breakups…like the typical artist, my journals are as scatterbrained as my mind.

All together, in those twelve hours I typed seventeen pages, or roughly 8,000 words. I didn’t put them in their place in the story, just typed them straight through, separating them with useful headers.

You’d think it would be better for me to have written those enigmatic ten scenes, since this stuff would get entered at some point regardless. You would think also that it would be better if there were several whole scenes rather than a ton of fragments.

Au contraire! I say in a terrible French accent.

Because the hardest part of writing is starting. It is much, much (much) easier to finish off a scene than put one word on a blank piece of paper. Now most of the scenes I need to write have already been started. I just have to fill in the gaps. Even the two monumental mind-fuck *scenes that are going to be the hardest to rewrite had some significant edits hidden away that I had forgotten about.

Furthermore, this is tremendous validation that I actually did something in 2009 besides bite my nails, Blip, and fret over the aphids eating my tomatoes.

And plenty of what was written didn’t suck! That’s key of course. I’m excited just to get this fresh content in because I am sick of looking at the same tired sentences I’ve been editing for ages. And those ten scenes smell a lot more like four scenes at the moment.

Moving forward: First step, naturally, is to stick all those scenes in the appropriate place in the draft. That may take the rest of the weekend. Then I will reprint the draft and continue editing it. This time I’m going to leave big spaces where I think there should be more content. Not sure whether I will start from page one or pick up where I left off.

Now to get off my ass and be unproductive!

_______________

*They entail describing pretty much the entire history of humanity in a touching, infuriating, frenzied dream. Exactly like that scene from Adaptation, actually.

Tech

Happy Birthday Firefox! Now if you’ll Kindly Step Aside…

November 10, 2009 Karma 9 Comments

Or: The Hardship of Being Ahead of the Curve

Much excitement today surrounds Firefox’s fifth birthday. We’re reminded how this product that seems indispensable to us today didn’t even exist in 2004. Firefox usage is a clear line that separates the old fogies and Luddites from the young, hip and with it. Indeed I can’t even imagine who these sixty percent are that still use Internet Explorer—perhaps people so behind they don’t know what a web browser is, and therefore haven’t figured out you can use a different one?

Most of us have experienced the frustration of trying to convince someone that it really is worth the five minutes it takes to download and install Firefox because the features it provides will improve your life on a daily basis. I want you to take a moment to dwell on this feeling, until your brow is furrowed in relived vexation. I’m asking this, dear reader, because in moments you’re going to do the same thing to me.

What if I told you that there was a browser out there that was hands-down superior to Firefox, Chrome, Safari and (of course) Explorer? This browser is never mentioned on the articles comparing Firefox’s rise to its lesser competitors. And since the techno-sphere is spending the entire day fawning over the Mozilla wonder-child, I get to experience this annoyance all day long. So I’m going to take this opportunity to patiently explain to you, for the second time, why you should download the Opera web browser immediately. Because I care, dammit. Now get that glazed look off your face, the one you see when you try to explain to grandpa how to send a text message.

Remember when you figured out that tabbed browsing saved a bunch of memory and was way more convenient than having twenty windows open? It was a big part of why many people switched over to Firefox. Yeah, tabs: Opera invented that. Not only that, they do it better. You can resize your tabs. Hovering over a tab creates a preview. You can duplicate a tab. You can create “follower” tabs: Once designated, any link you click in the current tab will open in the follower tab. When you close a tab it goes to the most recent one you used, not the first in the list: a small thing, but having it do the other way in Firefox drives me bananas!

I made my tabs huge, but you can have them normal-sized too

You can select any text and right-click to save it as a note. This feature has saved me so much time! Fuck notepad!

When you hit the back button, Opera keeps the page in the cache, so it loads instantly. I cannot understand why other browsers don’t do this.

You know how sometimes you’re on a webpage that’s coded for a larger screen and you keep having to scroll to the right to read? Opera has a little button that will fix that: “Fit to Width.” So simple it’s brilliant.

You’d be forgiven if you didn’t know Firefox has added the “recently closed tabs” option, because it is buried in their history menu. Opera had this feature first, and they put it in a more convenient location to the right of your tabs.

There is a magical thing called a Torrent file that allows people to download large files exponentially faster than a normal download. To use one of these files, you need a separate program like BitTorrent. That is unless you’re running Opera, where you can download the entirety of Army of Darkness with a single click because they have torrent downloading within the browser.

A new tab has a speed dial where you save your favorite sites. I think some other browsers are adopting this now, but in Opera you can change the size and layout of your speed dial, and even put any image as a background. You can also run any speed dial by typing it’s number into the url. So when I open a new tab, I can click on the little pic of my gmail to take me right there. Or, in the window I’m in, typing the number “two” and hitting enter will take me there. That’s faster than Brittany Spear’s little sister!

Please keep reading! Or Hula girl gets a lethal shot of Opium!

It’s little shortcuts like these that make me miss Opera when I’m stuck on someone else’s computer. Opera has a number of these, but the one that won my heart is the ability to run every search from the URL bar. I have tried explaining this to Firefox users and they point to their lame-ass Google toolbar. Yeah, I have that in Opera too and it’s collecting dust. Why? Because it’s only convenient if you’re searching Google. If you want to search wikipedia, you have to scroll down, switch to wikipedia, run the search, and then remember to switch it back to Google. In Opera, I can type “w anal fisting” directly into the URL bar, hit enter, and I’m learning the ins-and-outs from Wikipedia as soon as the page has finished loading!

Speaking of the URL bar, in the newest release, you can make a nickname for any site and run it from there. So if I want to visit the Glenn Beck website, instead of typing glennbeck.fox.com (or whatever), I can set it to be called “crazytown.” Then I only have to type “crazytown” in the URL bar and I’m there!

These are not all of the features that Opera has on other browsers, merely the ones that keep me hooked. I’ve been trying to get you people to try Opera since September of 2006, out of the goodness of my heart, but no! You don’t listen.

Admittedly I still love and use Firefox too. The thing Firefox still has going for it is that, because it is so popular, it has a lot more apps. And the developers won’t start making the cool apps for Opera until you (and you and you and your cousin Lenny) start using Opera. And I want those apps!

Dammit! I’ve shown my true colors. So you see I had a selfish motive after all.

Who cares! It’s better! Just stop blinking at me inexplicably and go download it!

Gotta Hear This Music, San Francisco, Concerts

Treasure Island Music Festival: Saturday Evening

November 3, 2009 Karma 2 Comments

Brazilian Girls greet the San Francisco sunset

As a Floridian, most bands arouse the crowd by saying how surprised they are to see a lively crowd in the netherworld of suburban hell. All day at Treasure Island the bands were raving about how much they loved our city. While every band wants to sweet talk their audience, it’s easy to believe. Treasure Island has one of the best views of the skyline and I can only imagine, as a performer, what it must have been like to be standing on that stage with water all around you and San Francisco leaping up across the bay bridge. The weather was perfect when the sunset greeted the Brazilian Girls on Saturday night. They raved quite a bit about what a joy it was to come and perform at this festival. With the clouds turning yellow and gold and a warm breeze blowing through the autumn eve, I think most of us were happy to be there.

Brazilian Girls keyboardist Didi Gutman does not disappoint

Even though they’re not actually Brazilian, I kept comparing the Brazilian Girls to the Brazilian act Cansei de ser Sexy. Both rely on a wordly, outrageous front woman that wears ridiculous outfits. Both have fantastic keyboardists. Both have a sense of humor and a touch of sexy. Where they differ is in their experience as musicians. Brazilian Girls have that been-around-the-block quality while CSS is still drunk on their own fame. For this reason CSS puts on a better show—there’s a ton of energy and excitement that it’s a thrill to be a part of. But Brazilian Girls were satisfying, even if their audience was mostly drawing blanks when it came to their multi-lingual songs. I’d like to see them again when they are the main act and have an audience that truly appreciates them.

Once Treasure Island was fully cloaked by the dark of night, MSTRKRFT took the stage. Seeing a live DJ-set is always like ordering the mystery meat, and MSTRKRFT was no exception. Simply because someone is a good producer doesn’t mean they are any good at throwing down tracks on the fly or anticipating what the audience is feeling. I had hoped that since half of MSTRKRFT was once in a rock band (Death From Above 1979) that they would be more committed to playing entire melodies unlike some other DJs I won’t mention *here. And they were slightly better. But I won’t say they picked the freshest dance tracks. More importantly, they did a lot of egotistical showing off of skillful song transitions that completely abandoned playing the best part of the song. A *lot of DJ’s do this and it drives me crazy. It wasn’t terrible but I would say the DJ that wasn’t even listed on the schedule was playing more songs that made me want to wiggle and jiggle than this all-star DJ.

MGMT was the headliner for Saturday night. MGMT started their set by announcing that this would be the last time they would be able to play these songs for a long time so they were going to play the entire album from start to finish. Holy smokes, right?! This implied that they are ready to hop into the studio to start working on new material, which is great news because we’ve all overplayed their first album and all it’s subsequent remixes till the phrase “Shock me like electric eel” leads me to **violent twitching.

It also meant that we of the mp3 generation were going to hear how the album was intended to be listened to. Hearing the whole thing played through really did give it more of a narrative quality that was more cohesive than, say, the entire ***Green Day’s American Idiot musical. I have often described MGMT to the uninitiated as a disco-folk band. But now that I’ve seen them I’d have to say they’re a psychedelic-disco-folk band. I caught some happy folks gazing at their shoes from time to time, including members of the band. They’re not a roof-raising show but they were skilled musicians and a good time was had by all.

*I lied: Bloody Beetroots, Crookers: shame shame shame

** not literally. It’s just overplayed, I’m saying.

***which was terrible. Just so you know.

Gotta Hear This Music, San Francisco

Treasure Island Music Festival 2009: Sat morning

October 23, 2009 Karma 8 Comments

Perfect weather introduced the first and most promising act of the Treasure Island Music Festival: The Limousines. I’ve caught the end of their show once before and they were good enough that I got up early on a Saturday just to see them again. Unfortunately traffic around the Berkeley Bowl caused me to miss half their show again. Their songs are cute and funny and both the lyrics and the beat make me want to dance from even the first time hearing them. In my mind, The Limousines are the band of 2009 to get excited about.

The next act we caught was Murs. He had nice beats though his rapping voice wasn’t particularly special. We got up and danced for “To Protect and Entertain,” which is a Busy P track that he has a segment in. Surprisingly, he chose to use the Crookers beat live. Can’t be blamed, as that is one sick remix. That’s maybe the second time I’ve heard a live version of a remix (not counting Smash-up Derby). I wonder if, and how quickly, that will become commonplace—and if DJs will be given proper credit for their reworkings.

Passion Pit at the Treasure Island Music Festival 2009

After that came Passion Pit. I don’t know why these guys don’t stir me more live. Their songs are all lovely and quirky and danceable. Maybe it’s because none of them have an inner-diva that craves the audience to stay riveted on their every move. Though I’ve read that their breakout album was actually a love-letter from the lead singer to his girlfriend, no insight is given as to where the songs come from. Not that I am discouraging anyone from seeing Passion Pit. The audience was enthralled, singing along like true fans. Replaying the shit bootleg I recorded there stirs joy in my heart. And they are still top of the heap among the bands putting out albums this year.

The Streets were the second biggest surprise of the festival. I’ve always felt that some of their songs were a bit slow or too repetitive but live the Brit-rapper’s charm and wit had me hooked. The Streets is a naughty but reasonable rake. The singer that accompanies him really adds to the show and the new guitarist did the kind of intensive shredding you don’t expect to see in a rap show. Blame all the photo editing I did prior to writing this, but Wayne Vibes made a cameo in my dreams last night. Anyone could plainly see that the penis of a man who can play guitar like that would have no trouble making new friends so it was no surprise when impish Streets informed Wayne that he’d be “getting laid tonight.”

At one point The Streets told a girl astride someone’s shoulders that she was blocking the view of all the people behind her. The penalty would be to remove her shirt. The chiding didn’t work on this girl but I can imagine that many titties are unleashed at Streets shows. As the show neared its end The Streets continually teased the audience that he had a favor to ask of us, just one favor, and that it was coming up. He finally had everyone in the audience “go low” so that you could look out and see the thousand behind you, crouching. Audience participation like this may ultimately be little more than silliness but it is a big part of *why I go to shows in the first place. I ate it up.

This man is not lacking in awesome either

*Oh! Seed for future blog!

Capitalism, Climate Change, Environment, Politics

Save the Planet: Buy Stuff!

October 23, 2009 Karma 4 Comments

You know you wish you were here — You wish you were here.

Funny how capitalism ruins things, even when they set out to do something swell. The Treasure Island Music Festival is a fine example. Not that the fest was ruined as a whole, but their efforts at environmentalism left the stale taste of unfiltered Oakland water in my mouth. They made big efforts to make the show green. Instead of trash bins, you had landfill, recycling and compost bins, with tips on what goes where. Kudos for that. But in other respects their need to be profitable got in the way of their stewardship to mama earth.

Firstly, I was irritated by their transit plan. There was no parking on Treasure Island. Instead one was supposed to take a free shuttle from the ATT Center. The problem with that is that the ATT Center is not on BART. Anyone (such as myself) who doesn’t live in San Francisco is expected to take a one hour BART ride to the city, catch a short cab ride to the shuttle and then shuttle back over the bridge I just came from. So I’m expected to commit to a trip that would likely take upwards of two hours for a destination that is twelve minutes drive from my house? No thanks. I suppose the folks planning the event live in the city and don’t think much of us “bridge and tunnel” types. Their site offered no advice as to how to get there if you weren’t coming from the city. We took a taxi there and hopped on the all-nighter bus to get ho me. Apparently some others had the same idea because the taxi stand had more people waiting than you can fit into your average Mission dive bar. The festival bragged about having zero-emissions buses but when someone who BARTs and bikes to get around has to take a cab just to get to your show, you’ve erred on the green master-plan somewhere.

But this is an understandable problem, considering they are dealing with an island in the middle of the Bay. Their plan to get rid of bottled water on the other hand offered far more reason for me to make my indignant face. A big part of their green plan was not selling bottled water at the festival. We were encouraged to bring our own sealed bottles into the site. I suppose this was to keep people from smuggling liquor in and out of the premises, otherwise I can’t imagine why I couldn’t bring an unsealed, empty bottle and refill it there. So instead of using a container I already had at home, I bought water to take into the fest. It defeats the point of not selling bottled water if I have to buy bottled water at CVS. Then when we get inside, we check out the “refilling stations.” Here they are charging three dollars to refill your water bottle or one dollar to refill the metal canisters they are selling at the festival. These little mementos cost fifteen bucks. So folks who didn’t bring their own water are encouraged to shell down a wad of cash to buy a metal water bottle that they probably don’t need and likely won’t keep after the festival so they can

use less plastic for the next two days. What a blow to consumerism!

OK, I’m through kvetching. The Treasure Island Music Festival is still the coolest music fest I’ve ever been to.

More details on the greatness to follow!

Tech, Class, Environment, All, Culture, Politics

Hipster Hunting

September 18, 2009 Karma 1 Comment

Janet said she wanted to go the Missouri Lounge to make fun of all the hipsters. Everyone agreed that The Missouri Lounge was just crawling with the little buggers.

I was surprised. Not about the Missouri Lounge—though I’d always thought the shack looked like more of a redneck dive—but that Janet wasn’t herself a hipster. She had the chunky, short-cropped hair and the thick black plastic glasses. But no. She was a hipster hater. How could I get them confused?

We ordered drinks and Janet picked out the most egregious violators and made fun of their outfits and drink selections. We did not stay long. Janet made a request from the DJ and there was some misunderstanding, or altercation. So we left.

That incident got me thinking. Did those people deserve to be made fun of? What made them worse people than Janet? What the hell was a hipster, anyway?

Since that day many moons ago, if I hear someone use the word I always ask them what it means. Two things quickly became apparent: 1) no two people seem to have the same definition 2) never have I ever heard the word used in a positive context.

For my money, a hipster is a person with an overly-developed sense of irony. But by that definition, the guy I know who is most likely to be a hipster is a 35-year-old Indian metalhead. He’s also the biggest hipster-hater I know. The “H-word” also seems to be associated with indie rock, though no one seems to know what the fuck that is either.

Here is what some of my research has come up with:

“Hipsters are trust fund babies who go to expensive private art programs.”
“Hipsters are people who wear mismatched, ill-fitting clothes and think they are hot.”
“Hipsters are the shallow types who live in the Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn.”
“Hipsters drink Pabst Blue Ribbon and ride fixie-bikes and make fun of normal people.”

Oh well then, that’s clear. If I am in Williamsburg and I meet someone in an art program I can assume they are shallow and living off daddy’s money. Additionally, if I meet a girl on a fixed-gear bike in Goodwill frocks I can assume she is a snotty bitch who can’t wait to talk about me behind my back. It would do the world a good deed to run off with her inexpensive union-made brew, taunting and laughing.

Much like the yuppies in The Last Days of Disco, “hipster” seems to describe a group of people whom everyone seems to agree is omnipresent and easily identifiable yet no one can find one among their circle of friends.

In case you can’t tell, this whole thing pisses me off. Being cruel to someone based on the way they dress, the music they listen to, their neighborhood or school of choice is discrimination. It may not be based on a thousand years of oppression like the prejudice we all like to think we’re too good for, but it is certainly the opposite of the moral high-ground the hipster-haters think they have.

The American College Dictionary defines Bohemian as “a person with artistic or intellectual tendencies, who lives and acts with no regard for conventional rules of behavior.”

I see very little to distinguish the hipster-hating of today from those who hated the punks and before that the hippies and before that the beatniks and on and on. No one can deny the fact that the hipster is the new bohemian, except the bohemians themselves, who’ve been tricked into thinking that the hipsters are the fake bohemians.

Cant wait to meet this friendly guy! — Can’t wait to meet this friendly guy!

Thus we have an odd scenario where sews-her-own-clothes girl (e.g. hipster) and shops-at-the-Gap girl (eg the anti-hipster) can both commiserate on how much they hate the shops-at-Urban-Outfitters girl (“fake” hipster). SewsHerOwnClothes thinks she is immune because she is more authentic than those people who shop at Urban Outfitters. But you can bet your best pair of Pumas that Gap girl and the Urban Outfitters “fake” hipster would be just as quick to make fun of the freak girl with the weird clothes she she probably made on her grandma’s sewing machine (as if that’s a bad thing).

The whole anti-bohemian attitude strikes me as a backlash against a group of people who feel slighted by those who have a different set of moral standards. An example would serve better than an explanation…

One of the definitions of hipster from Urban Dictionary:

Someone who thinks that they are being “special” and “unique” for liking some underground bullshit no one else cares about. And they pointlessly look down on people who don’t know anything about indie culture, because that’s the only thing they know anything about. They’re quick to call the rest of the world conformists when in reality, they are the ones conforming by partaking in a “too cool for mainstream so i am going to reject it by looking and acting like a grungy asshole” way of life only to seem uber-fashionable. They just end up looking like idiots.

Hipster: I won’t drink at starbucks, it’s too corporate.

Non-Hipster: I want a Louis Vitton purse because they are cool
Hipster: You’re such a conformist, haveing [sic] a Louis Vitton purse is so unoriginal. I like my purse I found in the gutter for $4 dollars.
Non-hipster: but it’s fugly
Hipster: yah, but no one else has it. It’s completely unique.
Non-hipster: that bum over there has something pretty similar though.
Hipster: You’re ignorant because you can’t see the real beauty in life.
I don’t have time for this, I’m gonna go to my cave of an apartment and listen to some indie rock you’ve probably never heard of….
Non hipster: You need to see a therapist
Hipster: I am my own therapist.

So the sad fashion whore who wrote that definition feels as though she is being judged because she doesn’t care where her clothes are made or how her consumption choices affect the local economy. And she’s right! I think the person who wrote the definition above is shallow and ignorant! I expect to be hated and unkindly labeled by anyone who thinks avoiding Starbucks is an example of “some underground bullshit.” That’s totally fine. Fuck that girl, and the guy who runs http://www.latfh.com, we were never meant to be friends!

But when I see the anarchists, punks, queers, ravers and other manner of adorable bohemians bitching about the “H” word, it’s too much. When someone seeks to say cruel things about a nonconformist, hipster is the first word they turn to, even if the nonconformists themselves think a hipster is something entirely different.

The focus on the hipster’s inauthenticity as an outsider, art appreciator, or moral consumer is a defense mechanism based on the labeler’s own insecurities in those same areas. The Louis Vitton-lover in the example above is an extreme example because s/he can’t even conceive that anyone would care about the journey of their designer purse from sweatshop to landfill. Your average anti-bohemian likes to think they appreciate art and philosophy as much or more than any weirdos with their weird music and their weird hair and their weird clothes. The assumption is that any reasons for being different are not better or coming from any set of values, merely contrivances. In this way, anti-hipsterism becomes another extension of the big-city-elitist versus corn-fed-anti-intellectual debate that is the hallmark of the American class system.

When the freaks, geeks, queers and quacks take aim at hipsters they are supporting conformity, regardless of what they think it means when they are around other bohemian-types.

Let us celebrate the hipster. Let us drink inexpensive beer and wear used clothes. Let’s listen to obscure music. Let’s have debates about crap surrealist literature and condone veganism. La vie Boheme, under any name: embrace it.

Edit: read the follow up to this post, Hipster Subculture Ripe for Parody [Time Magazine]

Writers, Writing, Books, Writing, Publishing, Publishing:

One Writer’s Process

August 10, 2008 Karma 3 Comments

As some of you may recall, I started writing a novel in November 2006. It’s a jerky process. And by “jerky” I mean both Steve Martin-esque and filled with more stops and starts than a pimply teen learning to drive a stick shift. I can hardly believe it has been two years and my best hope is that it will be no more than another year before I am willing to show it to a stranger. Not before then, surely. Coming November I’d like to participate in National Novel Writing Month again, which is the event that prompted me to start the thing in the first place. So I have set the goal to get the plot written out before November, hopefully with a week or so to plot out the project I’ll begin for NaNoWriMo becuase it will be no fun writing daily without a plot. Even less fun editing it later. Trust me, I know.

By writing out the plot, I mean writing every scene that takes place in the book. Right now I have a chapter by chapter outline, scenes of which are written in caps like this: IF JANET IS GOING TO SHAG ROCKY, MAYBE ADD A SCENE HERE WHERE SHE SINGS TO BE TOUCHED? For many months I struggled to wholly finish the chapter outline because there was one character I just hadn’t gotten right from the start. He kept whispering, I’m not who you think I am. And I knew he was right. It made it damn near impossible to write his scenes because his dialogue and movements were all uncertain. Its one thing to write a scene with the expectation that the writing may be crap and will have to be redone. Its even more annoying to be unclear about what characters are thinking/doing because a wrong fork may mean you have to redo every scene following.

About a month ago it all came to me, in the form of a power outage of all things. The power outage introduced a new and significant character as well as a subplot that threatens to dwarf the major plot.Maybe not. The major story arc was finished almost two years ago and I am seldom working on it so it is tough to say. And now that i have this new subplot I’m thinking I may not need all the others. But they are so intrinsically tied into my story that I’m not sure where I would snip them. I’m just going to run with it. If whole sections need to be cut out, now is not the time to decide that. I have to stay focused on the goal of getting the whole thing written out first. Like I can’t worry about if the protagonist is likeable enough (not a major deal, though I hear books with femaie protagonists don’t sell if the lead isn’t likeable) because there are more opportunities to flesh out her motivation as more gets added.

I find I spend more time than I would like adjusting the outline to reflect changes in chapter length, story, etc. The outline is essential because it is really easy to forget where you are in the story (what secrets the protagonist knows, if someone is dead and whether someone else knows it, for examples). If Shakespeare wrote with a feather and a candle I have no room to bitch. But next novel, I’m using some kind of outline program.

Now that my plot is written out, I went ahead and counted how many scenes I need to write for my goal. I came up with eighteen. This is a misleading number because more often than vice-versa, what seemed like one scene will take multiple scenes to develop when pen gets to paper. I don’t think this is overwriting, it is a sign of maturity as a writer in my mind. Sure sign of an amateur is an underdeveloped plot—you know, the guy and gal are making out and they just met last scene? Still, 18 scenes could definitely be written in a month!

Hopefully, post November I will have the seeds of another novel to puzzle over. That should be put aside for December, when I plan to pick this one up and look at it afresh. At that time, I have a number of read-throughs to do, each of which will involve reading the whole thing from start to finish. These include:

*making sure the dialog is consistent for each character’s personality
*plotting everything on a calendar to find inconsistencies.
*Make depressed character more sad.
*One plot point that afflicts the character needs to be brought up and developed more throughout.
*I noticed on the show Weeds that every character in every scene wants something and this adds more drama to every scene. I want to do a read through where I think about that.
*Make dream sequences more surreal and tighter, better written. There’s only one I’m happy with now.
*The five senses: what season is it? What’s the weather? How does the room smell? Some scenes are strong on this but I still have whole scenes that suffer from talking-head syndrome.
*The verb tenses are all screwed up, but I think I can deal with passing this problem along to my volunteer editors.
OK, now the good news! Since I did that count a few weeks ago, I am down to thirteen scenes that need to be written. Out of 20 chapters, I have the story written out for nine. This means I’ve written five of the eighteen projected in under a month. And through that chapter, things flow pretty smoothly, meaning I didn’t just plug the scene in with no context, I wrote the necessary stuff to make it fit in with the story line, even if that means rewriting parts of Chapter one. I even entirely rewrote one of the later chapters. There was nothing wrong with it, I just decided I could do it better. One sentence entered my mind and then another and another and before I knew it, dawn was upon me and the chapter was reborn. It felt great. It felt like writing should feel: exhilarating, liberating, total immersion. Today was another great day. I watched an episode of telly, ran some errands and then threw myself into it for 12 hours, stopping only to intake and elimate fuel. Every two hours I would look up and be surprised that so much time had passed. Then I would keep on truckin’.

Gotta Hear This Music, Writing, Culture

Song Lyrics and TV on the Radio

July 29, 2008 Karma

SeeqPod – Playable Search provided the songlist for the tunes mentioned in this blog

I have a long running argument with several people that love music but ignore song lyrics. Their thinking tends to be that they listen to music for the music, any poetry is incidental. I reply that by paying no attention to lyrics they are missing out on a huge facet of the experience, like watching a ballet without any music. True, not every great song has great lyrics. But finding out that a song you already love has an interesting story woven throughout adds a new layer of excitement to it. It allows a fresh discovery. I imagine this is one reason I am able to listen to some bands without tiring of them for months—because after getting to like the melody there is another whole layer to discover.

All art is simply communication—more stylized, beautiful, and complex but communication nonetheless. If one ignores the lyrics, that is like saying that you are interested only in the pleasure the sounds produce in your ears and not the idea the artist is using that music to impart. Thus, listening to music and ignoring the lyrics is a bit like kissing without affection. Most artists don’t sit down and just string together a melody. They usually have some idea of what the song is going to be about, at least a vague concept—love, politics, revenge. Just listening to an instrumental song, this is the most you can generally get out of it, an abstract feeling. Most artists have a more specific concept: “I’m going to write about how this person made me feel when they rejected me” or “I’m going to write a song about right now, lazing about on a Sunday afternoon.” All artists set out to express something, music is just their chosen medium. If they have taken the time to put words to the song, they’re giving you a message about what that song is about. As the music rises and falls, the lyrics correspond to that swell in emotion. You can speculate as to why the music crescendos and wanders as it does but if the artist has taken the time to write you a roadmap in the form of the lyrics, why not take a look at it?

How can one listen to “Both Hands” and not be drawn into the story about the woman on the third floor that listens to she and her partner’s “swansong”? Just the line, “I am writing graffitti on your body I am drawing the story of how hard we tried,” gives so much power and meaning to the song I am incredulous to imagine that you listen to the melody and aren’t moved by it.

Or the way Buffalo Springfield plings the guitar on the lines “Paranoia strikes deep/ Into your life it will creep…” That song is indelibly linked not just to the turbulant sixties but specifically to the clashes between cops and protestors. That song never had meaning for me until I listened to the lyrics. Now I can understand why it was a rallying call for a generation. The same goes with “Subterranean Homesick Blues”.

All this I’m talking about I experienced again today with TV on the Radio. I’ve been absorbing their sound for more than two years now and I never gave much thought to the lyrics. Electronic bands tend to be weak on songwriting anyway. But I happened upon a fantastic live acoustic version (which you can enjoy here) wherein the lyrics are more clear and I was able to appreciate them for the first time.

First I listened to “Young Liars.” The wordplay is intriguing and makes me want to listen to the song over and over to grasp how the interplay of these lyrics ties to the larger work. It starts off: “My mast ain’t so sturdy, my head is at half. I’m searching the clouds for the storm,” putting a dark sailing image in my head. This is followed by a huntress, her “bullets bearing the name of each tigress who’s left to a tooth. Save the skins for a pelt and the rest for a belt.” Later he says, “my heart’s still a marble in an empty jelly jar.” That’s a fantastic metaphor—it captures how he is feeling physically, intellectually and emotionally. He goes on to say that his nervousness will become prescience and “I’m Making maps out of your dreams.” The song ends with “Young liars, (Oh I said) Thank you for taking my hands/And burying them deep in the world’s wet womb/Where no one can heed their commands.” TV on the Radio has a sound that is dark and ominous, the music has already given us that abstraction. But more specifically the lyrics suggest the writer’s fear of the future and what he is capable of. And he does this using images (the ship in the storm, the ruthless huntress, the heart-jelly jar metaphor) that create a picture in the listener’s mind. The lyrics, though still vague, take the song from a pleasant abstraction and transform it into a dark journey. It adds such a visual layer to the song that a music video is the only way to supplement it (and videos never seem to be the artist’s vision, but the director’s, so it wouldn’t be the same at all). Reading the lyrics, how do you not visualize them? I picture the huntress on a B-52 bomber, loading a revolver, her legs crossed, a stack of rifles at her side, dressed in the 1940’s splendor of the Safari. And all this, visually, is just a metaphor for how he is feeling. You may visualize it differently, but undoubtably the image as you experience it brings something new to the song.

Now that I had discovered their lyrics, I was excited to move on to “Dry Drunk Emporer”. I was in for a surprise. I had no idea that TV on the Radio even wrote vaguely political songs but this one is clearly about our commander in chief.

The lyrics, in full:

baby boy
dieing under hot desert sun,
watch your colours run.

did you believe the lie they told you,
that christ would lead the way
and in a matter of days
hand us victory?

did you buy the bull they sold you,
that the bullets and the bombs
and all the strong arms
would bring home security?

all eyes upon
dry drunk emperor
gold cross cross jock skull and bones
mocking smile,
he’s been
standing naked for a while!
get him gone, get him gone, get him gone!!
and bring all the thieves to trial.

end their promise
end their dream
watch it turn to steam
rising to the nose of some cross legged god
gog of magog
end times sort of thing.
oh unmentionable disgrace
shield the childrens faces
as all the monied apes
display unimaginably poor taste
in a scramble for mastery.

atta’ boy get em with your gun
till mr. mega ton
tells us when we’ve won
or
what we’re gonna leave undone.

all eyes upon
dry drunk emperor
gold cross jock skull and bones
mocking smile,
he’s been
naked for a while.
get him gone, get him gone, get him gone!!!
and bring all his thieves to trial.

what if all the fathers and the sons
went marching with their guns
drawn on washington.
that would seal the deal,
show if it was real,
this supposed freedom.

what if all the bleeding hearts
took it on themselves
to make a brand new start.
organs pumpin on their sleeves,
paint murals on the white house
feed the leaders L.S.D
grab your fife and drum,
grab yor gold baton
and let’s meet on the lawn,
shut down this hypocrisy.

Wow. That’s a statement as bold as any rage against the machine like “Killing In the Name Of.” Here all along the phrase “Dry Drunk Emperor” was meaningless to me. I was liking the sound of the words strung together and nothing more. But it is so concise and apt. Bush is a “dry drunk” and those two words express so much—a history of irresponsibility, weakness and mistakes, the fact that he is dry implies that he is stifled, unhappy and looking for some other outlet, like war. “Emperor” is a better choice than president (which he isn’t) or even king—as the latter is related to kingdom while an emperor leads an empire, something liberals do associate with our government. More importantly, “emperor” reminds us of “the Emperor Wears No Clothes” which he alludes to with “he’s been standing naked for a while!”

“Dry Drunk Emperor” is more than a pretty song, it is a call to action. Like the Buffalo Springfield song, the lyrics mark it to this moment in history that so many of us feel connected to. Prior to knowing the words, I enjoyed the song but did not identify with it. Now that the lyrics have provided a key to understanding what TV on the Radio sought to express I feel a personal connection to the song and thus the band itself. This is so much more meaningful. It can only add to my experience of the music. And to all those music-lovers that like the pretty songs, and they like to sing along, but they don’t know what it means—well I say you’re only hearing half the music.

Politics

Uncle Sam is Reading My Emails

June 23, 2008 Karma

And Probably Yours Too

None of us are taking this seriously enough.

I was talking to a friend of mine online about a month ago. She is very a very competent law student that does a good job keeping up with current affairs. We were talking about the warrantless wiretapping. I was explaining to her what is at issue here, that they didn’t just hand over “suspected terrorists” (whatever those are) but the random correspondence of American citizens.

Her response was, “it is a good thing we are having this conversation online.”

Uh, not quite. It is a terrible thing we are having this conversation online. Because AT&T, the very company that is accused of handing this information over to the government, provides the internet where I work, where I was having this conversation. In fact where I am typing this right now.

But she still didn’t seem to get what I was saying—that this is not a safe conversation. And since she is one of the smartest, has-her-shit-together of my friends I think it is likely that many people aren’t getting this. So I am going to lay it out as simply as possible.

First: The EFF is suing AT&T, this much everyone has heard. What exactly do they mean by “warrantless wiretapping”? It is very simple. It means that AT&T couldn’t be bothered to keep track of those people who the feds had warrants to search and those who they didn’t.

They took all the content that was traversing their fibre optic cables, every email and text message and phone call, THE WHOLE EFFING PIPE and they split it. Thus all communication from AT&T is also going to a secret room accessible only to the NSA.

Please note the use of the present tense. Because this is still happening. There has been no freeze on what appears to be a very clear violation of the fourth amendment. You don’t have to have AT&T for this to apply. Can you say for sure that no one you are emailing or calling has AT&T? Of course not. It is more likely that they do. Ask around. Know anyone with an Iphone? Maybe it is time to ask them politely not to call you anymore. Certainly don’t email me, I have just confessed as an AT&T user. But even this is ridiculous. Just because AT&T got caught doesn’t mean the other companies aren’t doing the exact same thing.

Of course none of this has been proven in a court of law, it is only a court case at this point and everyone gets the benefit of being innocent until proven guilty. But don’t take my word for it. The engineer that hooked up the data stream put it this way:

“My job was to connect circuits into the splitter device which was hard-wired to the secret room, and effectively, the splitter copied the entire data stream of those internet cables into the secret room–and we’re talking about phone conversations, email web browsing, everything that goes across the internet.” [This short video is worth watching.]

In my mind, this is bigger than Clinton’s lie under oath, possibly bigger than Water Gate. You upset about an administration that is lying to the American public? Try lying to the American public and spying on them too. It is very important that this case be allowed to continue so that the people understand what is at stake and those responsible are brought to justice.

And there is no reason it shouldn’t continue. It’s not like the House and Senate will get together and pass a bill giving them a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card. The Congress wouldn’t do that, they don’t get involved in legislative affairs! That’s unheard of!..Oh, wait, that’s exactly what they’re doing. The Senate is passing a bill today that will give retroactive immunity to AT&T. It already passed in the House. “Retroactive immunity” is a fancy phrase that took me a while to wrap my head around. It means that even if they broke the law, it’s okay, we forgive them. And it will kill the lawsuit. Nothing to sue for.

Why on Earth would they do this? Everyone is shaking hands, saying what a great compromise this is. Really, I listened to all two hours of it on C-span. Those opposed were of the tone “This bill scares me to death…” Those in favor spent their debate time with congratulatory messages, “I’d like to thank Representatives Bob and Jane for making this possible…” I’m not joking, that was really the gist of it. There was no real argument for why the bill is a great compromise. It is more capitulation than compromise, here’s a great fact sheet from Senator Russ Feingold for the scary details. But in my mind, as long as retroactive immunity is on the table, this bill is totally unacceptable, unthinkable.

The argument in favor says that they were only following orders so AT&T shouldn’t be held responsible. Give me a break. No one pointed a gun at their heads. They broke the law and now the Democratic Congress that we elected is giving them a free ride, and probably the administration too. You can be sure this is going to impact Kucinich’s Impeachment bill. How convenient that the court case that will uncountably bring attention to the Bush Administration’s trampling of the Constitution will be swept under the rug, along with the Fourth Amendment. Wait a second, if the Democrats are rushing to the aid of the Republicans than who is supposed to be representing the people that want the Republicans out of office?

On that note, the latest turn in this sickening display of blatant cronyism is the about-face from Senator Obama. When he was trying to get the support of lefties he said he would fillibuster the FISA bill. Today he announced he is backing it. I thought I would have a few months of bliss before the luster wore off the man who gleams like a trophy on the podium. I take little consolation in seeing those who support Mr. Obama to the point of worship change their position over night, simply because he has.

What we are looking right now is the death knell of privacy in the United States. You may think that what you are writing is not interesting to the NSA but please don’t think for a second it is not being read by the NSA. No digital love note, no treasonous utterance, no meeting agenda, no late-night web-surfing, is safe. Sure, they still need a warrant to knock on your door and rifle through your file cabinet and your underwear drawer. But these days most of us keep our tax forms and our lingerie digitally; when this bill passes it will be like passing the keys to every house in America over to the NSA. Because Big Brother is not only watching, he is recording it all for later. And thanks to Congress, there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.

Future Is Fiction Blog