lost highway

The new Sleater Kinney is streaming over at NPR. Good, good stuff.

The notable thing for me at this point, listening to this record, is what a consistently good and engaging double album it is. I can name other 2xlp's with songs I like more (London Calling, White Album etc), but I can't remember a double with this consistency. It all works well to me, I don't find myself wishing one of the songs was cut.

Well they're sprawling and modern, but not quite as crazy as all those, have you tried Mitchell's Cloud Atlas? I've also championed his Thousand Autumns of Jacob DeZoet, here a lot. It's a little closer to a traditional novel, but I can't remember a historical fiction that blew my mind as much as it did. Actually, if you want to tackle a bear that has big ideas and some innovation, I say go back to Thomas Mann and check out the Magic Mountain. It's all about the competition of ideas and values and the project of modernity, playing out at an alpine rest home for the chronically ill. It's

I LOVED that book. Maybe my favorite Irving.

Well maybe I should take the time to flip to the back for my last couple hundred pages. I might have given up too easily on that idea, as I started I was trying to assemble what linearity I could as it jumped back and forth in time, and between characters. Also I didn't fully understand the whole "Year of the Depends Adult Undergarment" etc. commercial dates idea until I read more about the book. Sometimes the Incandenza's remind me a little of Salinger's Glass family, or Anderson's Tennenbaums.

It's so sad. I don't know what the world is supposed to take away from events like this.

I'm about to pull permits to demolish the detached garage and build a recording studio at the house my wife and I bought in 2014. It's gonna be madness.

I've been working on that one (with other books between) for months. My tips: keep a short note on the back of your bookmark to keep the Incandenza family straight, as well as the secret agents, and some of the major tennis kids. If you look at the wikipedia article it can clarify things when you dont see a certain character for 75 pages, it doesn't really spoil anything. I also noticed when I can keep up a good reading diet in my busier weeks (for me a few hours a week can be good) the book is not nearly as laborious as it seems. It takes adjustment and I skip most of the footnotes, but I c

Totally of interest. Some of the pics are illegible, but it's cool to see Kevin Shields' space ship. He's got some Boss EQ pedals with really radical settings on them. Also, I think Tweedy's board tends to change every year or so. Kind of like his amp selection. I'd love to hear him run through his choices and what informed them, but he seems less interested in talking gear nerdery than Nels, other than the occasional rare vintage guitar mention.

My folks are from Rochester and they're always talking about drinking Genesee Cream Ale back in the day. When it was finally distributed in the west, I was surprised and relieved that the 'cream' doesn't mean anything.

I can picture it. I've never met Pat but he seems just as generously nice as John proved to be in a somewhat awkward moment I had with him (the awkward was all me).

Sometimes their English is actually worse.

It is A historic day. The AN is utilized with words that begin with a vowel or words that start with a vowel sound such as 'an hour'. This avoids a glottal stop used to separate consecutive vowel sounds. The use of 'an' before all h words is a recent sort of malapropism spread by the pretentious and unwittingly adopted by the unassuming.

Me either.

Also, as you may already know, the band sells high quality downloads of the shows on their website. You can get some good recent ones there.

That Swans stuff is so brutal. It's always easier for me to respect than enjoy. I favor the Angels of Light (don't tell my cool friends).

The way I figure it as a nonbeliever who listens to that stuff is that I have listened to a ton of pop music written about some girl. Now, I have thoroughly enjoyed these songs having never met the girl they are about. Sometimes I'm not even sure if she exists. Same deal with gospel.

We've seen historically how for some countries, economic shifts lead to political and ideological shifts. In some cases countries grow out of communism because of market incentives. Cuba is one of the only countries in the new world that we don't do business with (them and Venezuela right?). It's a country filled with a colorful culture, a characteristic cuisine, excellent agricultural zones, and a strong need to update some of their technological infrastructure. Opening that up to trade with the U.S. can only benefit us economically and culturally, and will likely benefit their citizens

I can't fathom how Cuba is going to be more of a threat to us when we are on speaking terms. When people get upset about our president speaking to othet leaders it seems weird. Additionally wouldn't it be strategically helpful to make Cuba sweet on us while Russia is on the ropes from the current oil prices?

Well the deficit is shrinking. Obama is still president. No one can do anything about abortion. Now gay people can get married in more parts of the country. It's been a very hard year for the world at large, but I'd say America is better off than it was 12 months ago. Oh wait, there's a civil rights crisis... so maybe not entirely.

That's an interesting contrast because we pay social security tax under the theory that we're individually contributing and will one day be entitled one share of whatever's left (thanks a lot dad!). When we pay for bombs or school teachers we contribute a lump sum.

Your graphic suggests welfare is 385 billion and defense is 839 billion, so no. You're wrong on that.

Yeah less on welfare than defense, less on education, also I said medicaid not "all healthcare". I will say, and I think you'd agree, the budget this year is uniquely thrifty in the military percentages but following a recent trend. I wont pretend to know your experiences, but the gig seemed to get a lot nastier after 2001. I've known a couple guys, and picked up some stories on the radio that made me think the best way to support troops is to prevent them from being forced into desert snipe hunts.

More than the safety net programs some people are always moaning about, or education, or even medicaid for that matter. None of these projects rely on nebulous intelligence reports from overseas or myth-making to try and trick some poor kid into joining.

I can't get past the disconnect between a libertarian impulse that suggests every wasted tax dollar is a sin against the American people, and a compulsive allegiance to a defense department that spends more, and costs actual human lives. That will never stop being weird to me.