This is a Magnetic Fields song off of 69 Love Songs. I can’t really explain why I like it so much, but you should find it and give it a listen. It just makes me laugh the way Stephin sings the “yeah, oh yeah” parts with an almost smirk in his voice. It makes me laugh, but the subject matter really isn’t funny. It’s just the dryness of it that makes me smile I guess. A fact which loses it’s effect when written down, but I can’t resist posting it just the same.

The song takes the form of a duet, with verses traded back and forth between Stephin and Claudia Gonson. Typical she loves him, and he basically totally hates her, kind of song. And appearantly he has for quite some time.

Yeah, Oh Yeah!
by. Stephin Merrit

Are you out of love with me?
Are you longing to be free?
Do I drive you up a tree?

Yeah! Oh, yeah!

Do I drive you up the wall?
Do you dread every phone call?
Can you not stand me at all?

Yeah! Oh, yeah!

Though I need you more than air
is it true you just don’t care?
Are you having an affair?

Yeah! Oh, yeah!

When we met I thought
money was everything
so I let you buy the house,
the car, the ring
but I can’t take your perpetual whining
and you can’t sing

I thought if we live apart
we could made a brand-new start
Do you want to break my heart?

Yeah! Oh, yeah!

I’ve enjoyed making you
miserable for years
found peace of mind in
playing on your fears
How I loved to catch your gold
and silver tears, but now my dear…

What a dark and dreary life
Are you reaching for a knife?
Could you really kill your wife?

Yeah! Oh, yeah!

Oh, I die, I die, I die!
So it’s over, you and I
Was my whole life just a lie?

Yeah! Oh, yeah!

I just finished reading the article Culture over on Diginhalation. It’s a really good article, and I have only a few comments I wanted to make, and I figured I would make them here and test out our trackbacking to make sure it’s working.

I can understand the frustration that there doesn’t seem to be the involvement from the youth that we one would hope for. However it’s worth noting the incredible entrenchment the media and dominant cultural status quo have managed in the last 30 years. Personally, I see more disenfranchisement with the media, and with the consumerist culture in the youth than I do with the traditional political apparatus. It seems to me that most young people have nearly completely given up on politics in it’s stereotypical sense. (Since the deck is so blatantly stacked against us, and always will be with our current voting system, what’s the point? Condorcet NOW please! Preferably Cloneproof Schwartz Sequential Dropping.)

Yet, despite “hipster” (I promise I won’t use that word again), antipathy towards traditional political routes of expression, there are more than a few who are willing to smash the windows out of a Starbucks, get arrested to stop a timber sale, or burn down an SUV dealership. And that warms my heart.

We also must keep in mind that due to the corporate/political intertwining which is so blatant now to be utterly indefensible, a revolution against the “media” *is* a political revolution. The media is the propaganda wing of corporate power, the government is it’s “enforcement” wing. The one who busts knees when you act up. So revolution against one, is on some level revolution against the whole thing.

And ultimately, I see young people giving up on trying to work within the system, and instead smashing things. Which can only be good. Think of how much better off we would be if the “hippies” hadn’t sold out and decided to work within the system? Imagine if people had been smashing the hell out of corporate property at every free trade talk that has ever happened since 1970? Imagine if the ELF could have started blowing up Wal-Marts and SUV dealerships when they started, instead of now when they are nearly as omnipresent as the Borg? Genoa, Seattle, the list goes on. Sure, it’s not reached a real critical mass yet, but I think a great many young people are sharpening up to the idea that this system WILL stop. It WILL crash. The most we can hope for is pumping the brakes a few times before it hits the wall, or at the very least, a removal of the foot from the accelerator. And maybe a tree or two left, a handful of salmon maybe….some fresh water.

I haven’t heard a single person support the idea of drilling ANWR, other than Republican politicians, yet here we are today with an energy bill sailing through the house proposing things that no one other than corporate interests want.

It’s a stark reality, but one that must be faced in whatever way possible. I don’t think a huge organized movement will do it, but only because nothing will do “it”. It can’t really be stopped, the blow can only be softened, and even then, not by very much. We just each have to work in our own way to save what we think needs to be saved, and to stop what we feel must be stopped. Some write books, some write blogs, some blow up damns. Others chain themselves to trees. Some destroy property.

To answer the questions you pose at the end of the article, it’s become a very decentralized world. The “revolution” will also be decentralized. Cells, small groups, individuals doing their thing, whatever it may be.

What will it take? It doesn’t matter. If it takes more than what we’ve already seen, we’re doomed. I’m firmly in the camp that knows we’re doomed. So do whatever you can, wherever you can, educate yourself, and save whatever you can. Stop whatever you can. We’re not going to take down the system, we ARE the system. And the system will crash. All you can do is grab what you hold dear, and hope there is some of it left after the crash.

A few little updates and random things I want to throw out there..

Prison terms on tap for ‘prerelease’ pirates | CNET News.com

File-swappers who distribute a single copy of a prerelease movie on the Internet can be imprisoned for up to three years, under a bill that’s slated to become the most dramatic expansion of online piracy penalties in years.

The bill, approved by Congress on Tuesday, is written so broadly it could make a federal felon of anyone who has even one copy of a film, software program or music file in a shared folder and should have known the copyrighted work had not been commercially released. Stiff fines of up to $250,000 can also be levied. Penalties would apply regardless of whether any downloading took place.

If signed into law, as expected, the bill would significantly lower the bar for online copyright prosecutions. Current law sanctions criminal penalties of up to three years in prison for “the reproduction or distribution of 10 or more copies or phonorecords of one or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of $2,500 or more.”

Absolutely brilliant. Nothing quite like draconian law making to fight a “problem” you will never be able to defeat without shutting down the internet.

Ah…yes, that time again…probably need to roll one up and go on a walk in the park this afternoon…

Also, Happy Birthday Hitler! I bet you never thought one of your youth would get to be pope! What better present could you ask for?
–
Update: Yes… I know he was forced to be in the Hitler Youth, as were all people that age in Germany at that time.

How can I tell you
All that is wrong
Nothing invites you
Can’t get along - with you now
And I try to
There is a page
It’s still unwritten
Why can’t you find
Time in your schedule
To pick up…

Oh, pick up for God’s sake
When we call you back to the lake

I sat down next to her on the bunk of the cabin. About 15 beers prior, I could have walked myself to the bunk under my own power, but at this point I was just a hair short of needing to be carried. She did her best to lead me into the cabin, after she wisely realized that I probably shouldn’t be passed out on top of the picnic table when her mother showed up.

After we sat down she asked me again if I knew for sure I wanted to leave and return home permanently.

“Yeah, I really miss it. I miss my friends. I don’t know what I’m doing. I feel like I don’t know who I am anymore.”

“Well, I love you, you know.”

Those words hit my heart like a million bombs through a dreary alcohol fog.

“I love you too. I thought you’d never say it though.”

We said a few more words to each other, which I can’t remember due to their relative unimportance.

Promptly 20 seconds later, at roughly 3:30am, her mom stormed in, grabbed her by my shirt she was wearing and dragged her home screaming something I don’t want to know at her in Polish. She was only wearing my t-shirt and pants because we had gone swimming in the lake earlier and she didn’t have any dry clothes, while I did since I was living there. However, I can understand her mothers concern at arriving at 3:30am to retrieve her daughter from my clutches, only to find her clothing all hanging over the rail of the porch…right down to the skivvies.

While we had been spending a lot of time together prior to this, including a fateful trip to Woodstock 99, I mark this night down as a time when things obviously got serious. It’s also worth noting that at this point, we hadn’t even kissed.

And so stupid was I, that the following Monday, I marched back into my bosses office the same way I had the prior Friday, only this time I told him “Hey, never mind that tearful breakdown about how I’m leaving that I gave last Friday. I’m actually going to stay.” He was surprised, but I think it played out pretty much according to his plan, as she was his neighbor, and it was his cabin that we were drinking, partying, and swimming at that night.

Now here I sit, nearly 6 years later; desperately trying to forget the seeds of a life that won’t ever come to fruition.

It’s interesting to note in retrospect that on this night, our first serious conversation about our relationship in any form, we were both really rather hammered. And that this would come to be the standard method of our communicating important relationship issues to each other. I literally, for the life of me, cannot remember a single sober relationship conversation until after we broke up…..5 1/2 years later. Sometimes, in the early days, the communicative substance of choice was E, primarily it was alcohol though.

I’m sure that means something; something bad. Even with the inebriation requirement all serious conversations had, such conversations were rare. Like on the order of 10 or so, really. It was madness. I’m completely shocked and awed that we really lasted so long without having any ability to communicate with each other in any serious fashion. All I can really say is it was my fault. I knew she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, communicate. Most of our discussions were me talking, with her nodding or shaking her head in relation to whatever statement I made. And no, this was not due to me talking incessantly, but rather my desire to feel some communication was occurring, when she was so short of words. Of cause, it probably also has to do with the fact that most of our serious relationship conversations after the initial ones were related to her cheating on me, more than once.

I should have ended it, so many times - but I didn’t. I loved her, a whole hell of a lot; stupidly, but truly. And oddly, since she didn’t care about politics, she didn’t like my music outside of the electronic, and she didn’t like watching anything on TV in the evening’s besides sitcoms or comedies.

After I forgave her for cheating on me the second time, I actually operated for several years under the assumption that it would end any minute. I trained my mind, against my better judgment, to assume that no news, and no communication, was good news, and good communication. It’s not. At this point, I think it’s a sign that someone doesn’t respect you enough to bother keeping you informed.

After we were together, oh, about 4 years (3 of which were after her last indiscretion). My mother came to stay with us in our apartment. During that trip, we went to a really awesome greenhouse together and on our way home that summer evening, it dawned on me that I really finally felt at home, and comfortable on the east coast, with her, in our new apartment. I continued to feel that way, very secure, very happy, and very comfortable for a little over a year. Then one night it was over.

I woke up hung-over that morning, like so many other mornings. I gave her a check to put in our house savings fund. We prepared for the Super Bowl party that evening, making snacks and whatnot. Everything seemed fine. We were happy, laughing, kissing, hugging, and all the good stuff. The next morning I watched the sunrise through an alcohol fog not unlike the one that started all this, yet single for the first time in 5 1/2 years, Built to Spill blasting in my ears.

I’m not sure she has real emotions. If she does, she hides them better than any man I’ve ever met.

Baby, Baby
The hurt heals slow
And who can believe in tomorrow?
When Brightness Falls
Who’ll come running?
When Brightness Falls
Who’ll come running?

The ticket’s exploded
Only one way out
Live in lightness
Lost in lightness
There’s nothing left to write about
And time’s no longer
The greatest injustice of all
On this new day.

–David Sylvian, “Brightness Falls“

Benedict XVI: German cardinal elected pope - Election of a pope - MSNBC.com

Does anyone have any idea what the hell this means?

“The fact that the Lord can work and act even with insufficient means consoles me…”

Why on earth would that console you? What kind of supreme being do you pray to, you crazy old bastard?

It’s Not Your Father’s America Any More

This is really a rather good article detailing some of the Republicans more recent crimes.

A particularly interesting segment:

In the past several weeks, for example, some science museums, mainly in the South, have announced they will no longer show films that discuss evolution, the geology of the Earth or the Big Bang theory for fear of offending people who think such topics contradict the Bible.

Now, why on earth would they want a freaking science museum not to teach science? It’s even more retarded than not wanting it to be taught in schools (which was prior to this, on top of my list of most retarded things religious freaks have done lately). I don’t storm into their houses of delusion and proclaim I’m offended by them talking about how Santa Clause , err…God, created the universe and everything in 7 days. Why bother with science museums? A science museum is a place of learning, a church is a place you go to reaffirm your group delusion. Don’t try to blur the line between those two places. They each have their uses, thank you.

I agree with Bill Maher when he says that all organized religion is really a neurological disorder.