"I Just Want to Kiss Your Face"

Well heck. Here's my old friend Gene with a dang sweet video built for his song "Your Face." Occasionally too sweet!

 

Gene is best known for this song. (Adult language.)

Many more videos of Gene here. Easily downloadable songs here.

Southern Oregon Music

Here's a not exactly blisteringly compelling little video about a performance venue near my old home of Ashland, Oregon. It's been going for the last two years - they started right after I left, herm. Several old freinds featured. (Hi Gene, Jef, Sage!)

 

It's a side stage at the Britt Festivals - truly one of the great music venues on earth. (Saw Mark Knopfler from the grass in front of the stage, fifteen feet from us, picnic basket, wine...oy.)

Paul Ryan: Mitt Romney Will Have to Do For Now

This is hilarious. How often do you hear a vice presidential candidate say somthing like this about the presidential candidate who picked him?

Asked about his (more extreme than Romney's already extreme) position on abortion, Paul Ryan says:

Mitt Romney is going to be president. The president sets policy. His policy is exceptions for rape, incest, life of the mother. I'm comfortable with it because it's a good step in the right direction.

"It's a good step in the right direction." Or: "The guy who picked me to be his running mate will do for now as president, I guess."

Holy crap, that's funny.

 

Link.

Obama on Akin's Horrible Rape Comments

Perfect:

"Rape is rape," Obama said. "The idea that we should be parsing, and qualifying, and slicing what types of rape we're talking about, doesn't make sense to the American people."

Obama added that Akin's remarks are further evidence of why it doesn't make sense for legislators, "most of whom are men," to make decisions regarding women's health.

That is really, really good. Except that Akin's position IS the position of many, many Republicans, including Paul Ryan.

Akin "clarified" his remarks by saying he meant "forcible" rape, rather than "legitimate" rape - which is just as wrong, and just as horrible. (The inference here is that, in addition to sick inference that a rape isn't a rape if it results in a pregnancy, a rape isn't a rape if the victim doesn't fight enough - or something - as if especially young women could not be frightened or threatened into submission. But again - why are these bastards even beginning to go there? Why are they looking for outs for rapists and blame for victims? Because theyr'e horrible broken people? Yes!)

But this is ultimately good - because it shines a light on Paul Ryan:

Paul Ryan also co-sponsored HR 3, the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion" bill in which Republicans tried to redefine rape so that it only applied to "forcible" rape so those fake rape victims would stop exploiting loopholes to cash in on fabulous gifts and prizes. Republicans pulled that part out of the bill so everyone would stop criticizing them, and then they tried to sneak it back in anyway.

These are broken, horrible, psychotic people.

Update: My friend Gene says it is wrong to use the term "psychotic," as psychosis is a mental illness...bad name for people actually suffering this illness...etc. Point (and joke) taken.

Is Rep. Todd Akin a Rapist? [updated III]

A member of the U.S. Congress, explaining why he believes abortion should be outlawed even in the case of rape, said these words today:

“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

If a rape results in pregnancy, in other words, it's not "legitimate rape."

If a man with a large knife grabs a women from a sidewalk, forces her into some bushes and to the ground, beats her, half-strangles her, forces her legs apart, and forces his penis into her vagina - it's not rape if it results in her becoming pregnant. (In other words, again.)

If he hates women this much, you cannot help but wonder: Does Representative Todd Akin have children that most people know nothing about? Not through "legitimate rape," you understand - because that would be impossible.

Update:

Best Todd Akin retort I've seen/heard: "Legitimate women don't catch fire when you burn them at the stake"
— Jessica Winter (@winterjessica) August 20, 2012

Update II: Very important piece on the underbelly of Akin's comments, and their relation to VP candidate Paul Ryan:

Akin was Paul Ryan's co-sponsor on a House bill just last year banning the use of federal funds for abortion except in cases of “forcible rape.” This term seemed laughably redundant since all rape, by definition, is forced. But this redefinition of rape was deceptively sinister. Statutory rapists often use coercion but not physical force. If the measure had passed, a 13-year old emotionally manipulated into having sex with an older friend or relative would no longer be able to use Medicaid to terminate a resulting pregnancy. Nor would her parents be able to use their tax-exempt health savings fund.

Update III - Harry Schearer:

I've discovered, thanks to Todd Akin, that women subjected to "legitimate murder" don't really die.
— Harry Shearer (@theharryshearer) August 19, 2012

Romney-Ryan Propose "American Independence Vouchers"

WASHINGTON - Mitt Romney and running mate Paul Ryan today released the outlines of a proposal that they say will bring a "permanent end" to the country's "crippling" spending and debt problems. The proposal calls for a major overhaul of the Independence Entitlement Program, first formulated in 1776.

The plan entails inviting the British government to send military units to invade and ravage American cities.

"They can kill old people," Mr. Romney said. "They can take the homes, the fortunes of sick people, whatever they like. And the American people can fight for their own independence. Thats how we used to do things, before the costly and nation-killing Independence Entitlement Program began."

Asked about critics' concerns that the plan ended American independence as we know it, Romney's vice-presidential candidate stepped up to the podium.

"Don't believe the lies," Mr. Ryan said. "This plan does not end independence, it improves it. Under this plan every American would get an 'American Independence Voucher,' which will entitle them to complete independence from the British. Not forever—for a while. We can't keep trying to take care of our citizens' independence forever. We're not Europe."

The plan was met with positive reviews by most in the media, with several pundits calling it "very courageous."

The Single Most Important Paragraph About the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election

Esquire's Charles Pierce:

Paul Ryan is an authentically dangerous zealot. He does not want to reform entitlements. He wants to eliminate them. He wants to eliminate them because he doesn't believe they are a legitimate function of government. He is a smiling, aw-shucks murderer of opportunity, a creator of dystopias in which he never will have to live. This now is an argument not over what kind of political commonwealth we will have, but rather whether or not we will have one at all, because Paul Ryan does not believe in the most primary institution of that commonwealth: our government. The first three words of the Preamble to the Constitution make a lie out of every speech he's ever given. He looks at the country and sees its government as something alien that is holding down the individual entrepreneurial genius of 200 million people, and not as their creation, and the vehicle through which that genius can be channelled for the general welfare.

Photo credit.

Johann Sebastian BECK to Release Album of Songs Playing Only in His Mind

Of all the wankeriffic, pretentious, self-aggrandizing - good god:

If you’ve been patiently waiting for the first new Beck album in four years we’ve got some bad news for you: If you can’t read sheet music you’re out of luck because his new collection of 20 songs is pure notation and doesn’t include any actual recordings of him performing the songs. 

Beck’s follow-up to 2008’s Modern Guilt is called Beck Hansen’s Song Reader and according to a statement by McSweeney’s, “In the wake of Modern Guilt and [2006's] The Information, Beck’s latest album comes in an almost-forgotten form — twenty songs existing only as individual pieces of sheet music, never before released or recorded.” 

“The songs here are as unfailingly exciting as you’d expect from their author,” the statement continues. “But..."

Sorry. I stopped reading right there. Right there after they said "The songs here are as unfailingly exciting as you’d expect from their author."

Wow. You know - even Dylan dropped a load of turds now and then. And we're supposed to take Beck's word - his own and his publisher's word on his music - at how "unfailingly exciting" these songs are? Holy shit.

I can't wait for Beck's next album: Beck Hansen's Song Thinker. "Pay Beck $28 and feel yourself ravished by His new masterpieces! But you'll have to play them yourself—as you imagine them playing in His beautiful mind!"

I mean and I've liked the guy's music. "Devil's haircut" - I wish I'd written that (or at least just the chorus line) just because. But hell on fire...

P.S. I forgot to mention: This is also meant as a "statement" about the music business, illegal downloading, and so on. And so brilliant a statement it is - because people will never be able to copy pieces of paper! Like they can music!

Photo.

Man Covered in His Own Feces Says Obama Smells Bad

PALM BEACH, FLORIDA - Ted Nugent blah blah blah blah blah.

P.S. Covered in his own feces.

Old Sayings...Reconsidered: "An apple a day..."

"An apple a day keeps the doctor away."

All well and good until you need a doctor. 

This has been another episode of "Old Sayings…Reconsidered."