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I edited a tangent out of that last post, but I'll mention it here: Phil Agre's "What Is Conservatism and What Is Wrong With It?". The blunt summary:

Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception and has no place in the modern world.

I find this essay somewhat infuriating, because he doesn't, to my mind, adequately prove a thesis that seems, well, controversial. In particular, he leaves his readers to draw the lines connecting the conservatism of, say, Edmund Burke with that of Dick Cheney. Certainly those conservatives I've had reasonable conversations with haven't seen themselves as the aristocracy. (Well, almost certainly.)

Still, it's a bracing read, and much of what he says makes sense to me... and beyond that, makes sense of what I see around me. It's become one of the tools I use to understand what's going on. Maybe you can use it too. Also, maybe sometime my "c" key will start working properly again.

So far, this is my favorite response to an essentially dumb article in which Mark Helprin argues for an infinitely extended copyright term.

Which reminds me: For the most part, I seem to be ( opposed to inheritance. )

But what do I know? So far my inheritance from relatives is some tablecloths and a couple of kitchen items. I might see things differently if I discover a rich and gifted uncle.

Hey! Here's what's going on with my bands!

DeatHat's doing a small tour next month, through Portland, Seattle, Bellingham, and hopefully more of the Northwest; and then down by Los Angeles for a night or two. Come see us! Especially if you live in one of those places! Especially especially if we can sleep on your floor after the show.

Tin Cat's still recording, and figuring out what it's like to be a trio; we'd better have an answer by Friday, when we play at Mission City Coffee in Santa Clara. Among other things, we'll be debuting the first new song I've written since 2005.

Vermillion Lies has a new "scream-a-long" EP, from which I recommend you download the song "Global Warming".

Also, to my surprise, I'll be playing a solo electric set tonight at Barefoot.

Photo by Roger of The Record Club, who put together the show.

Just found this video of Cesar and Sammy, of the aforementioned Lisps:

Too adorable. (On tour they also have bass and drums, and more rock.)

DeatHat is playing three shows this week, one of them as far as we've ever had to drive for a show, and all on my first week on a new job. I'm looking forward to sleeping in on Saturday.

For some shows we dress up, but even when we don't, Kate almost always has a costume. She uses makeup--~~whitens the face,~~ reddens the lips, but the most striking element is a dark stripe across her face, at eye level, sort of like a domino mask. Oh, like this:

( Read more... )

Tomorrow night we open for Jason Webley, one of Kate's favorite performers (I like him too) at the Cayuga Vault in Santa Cruz. We're totally looking forward to it. Also, the Lisps are heading through LA, San Diego, Denver, and across the midwest on their way home to Brooklyn. Highly recommended.

Rep. Kucinich says he plans to file articles of impeachment against Dick Cheney.

I used to think impeaching Bush and Cheney was a stupid joke of an idea. It was the kind of kneejerk thing my radical friends said every time a Republican did something they didn't like.

Now? They've broken the law, they've violated the constitution. They say openly that they're not constrained by legislation.

Bush can't be reelected, and Cheney has always said he won't run. Public loathing of their policies means nothing to them.

Now? I think it's our only option.

Parallel universe post: Otters Holding Hands.

Hey, DeatHat's first EP got an actual review! Excerpts: "weirdly woozy... irritating... disembodied simplicity... a cello would have fared better... labours uphill... has me partially enraged... ping-oooooooooo." Of course, that's just the way I read it--actually it's really positive, or at least it made us look up "swings and roundabouts". Here's the review (by Mick Mercer, by the way), and oh by the way you can order Eponymy on CD Baby.

Current Music: Dosh, "Steve the Cat"

Rhodri Marsden - he's writing a book! - is looking for bad tour stories:

So instead, here's an open appeal for anyone who has ever been in a band and had a nightmare travelling to a shit gig somewhere rubbish with a load of wankers and got paid nothing. I have put up a little form at

http://rhodri.biz/help

where any resentful musicians can fill in some ticky boxes to advise me of the kind of story they have; leave their name and email address at the bottom, click "submit", and leave it up to me to get back to them. You don't have to be famous. It's better if you're not.

I forgot where I got the link from, but if you're interested in the state of health care in America, this article by Philip Longman is fascinating. It's about a radical improvement in quality within the Veterans Health Administration, and why, quoting one professor of public health, "The U.S. medical market as presently constituted simply does not provide a strong business case for quality."

I question a passing remark that it's safe to assume "that Americans are not going to accept the idea of government-run health care any time soon". In a recent poll, more people favored government-run health care than the current system. That number, I suspect, is on its way up. The devil is in the details, though. In other polls, support for government-provided health care is high, but drops if it means less choice, longer waits, etc. Which it probably does.

As for me, a couple months ago I needed to avail myself for the first time of my new health care provider, Kaiser Permanente. They listened to my symptoms over the phone and told me to come in for a test and a drug. I went to the hospital that night, a big blocky building about three miles from my home, went upstairs for the test and downstairs to fill the prescription, and went home feeling, for the first time I can remember, satisfied by a brush with the medical industry. It occurred to me that Kaiser, with its monolithic insurer/doctor/hospital/pharmacy structure, is as close as I've ever been to socialized medicine, and as such probably is balm to my Nordic (well, half-Nordic) soul.

(Weird: A Google search for "VHA" turns up a "nationwide network of community-owned health care systems and their physicians," not the Veterans Health Administration. The VHA in VHA, Inc., officially doesn't stand for anything. Seems like a poorly chosen name, or at least kind of rude.)

For the record, and since I did spend all that time watching movies at Cinequest, here are notes on a few of my favorites (in no special order):

The Third Monday in October, a wonderful documentary about the 2004 campaign for president... of the student council, at four middle schools across the United States. People are so great.
We Are the Strange, like nothing I've ever seen, with its mix of stop-motion animation, anime action, and old-school 8-bit video games, all animated over three years by one guy from San Jose in his bedroom.
Outsourced, the most conventionally enjoyable movie I saw at the festival, a sweet comedy about a salesman who goes to India to train a replacement to head his company's order fulfillment department.

Also of note:

Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out, a first-person documentary compiled by Stewart Copeland from miles of Super 8 footage he took while touring with the Police. Plus a fascinating appearance by Copeland himself, which unfortunately I had to leave early, so I don't know how it ended.
Blood Car, a mildly horror-ish comedy about a vegan schoolteacher who, while trying to invent a wheatgrass-powered automobile, accidentally creates instead an engine that runs on human blood. Over the top as a movie, yet nicely understated in its politics. lithiumnature, rent this DVD when it comes out.

When I read the fourth paragraph of this article, I thought, "I never thought I'd see the day when I'd long for the good old days of John Ashcroft."

But then I remembered that when he announced his resignation, I was elated for about fifteen seconds before I thought, "No... somehow, these people will just manage to find someone worse."

And they did! Score 1 for Erik, 0 for America.

Last month over lunch I told Kate I'd been thinking that there are only two really important things to do right now: Stop the impending war with Iran, and save the planet. Then I went home and played World of Warcraft for a few days, and for the next couple weeks I watched movies at Cinequest, with a couple of breaks to play music. It's not that I think those things are more important than war and the environment, it's just that I'm not a very good person.

Anyway, here's the letter I finally wrote today to my representative and senators:

( Read more... )

You know, it's not the best thing I've ever written, and there are more nuances than I allow for in the letter, but since it mostly just goes in a bin that says "Iran war: NO," I guess that's okay.

(While looking for a link, I stumbled across this commentary, which points out that only 10% of polled Americans think we should attack Iran... although the headline, weirdly, says 15%.)

Tin Cat is losing a member. Meredith is leaving the band so she can focus on her own material (and because she lives farther away than is really convenient for rehearsal). It's sad in some ways, but really the best thing for all involved. The rest of us will keep playing as Tin Cat. We've played occasionally in that configuration already. It's a different sound: a little sparser, looser, lighter.

We have one more show with Meredith: Monday night we're playing a feature at the Red Rock Coffee Company open mike, where we first started playing together.

For posterity's sake, I tried to figure out how long we've been a band. I don't know when we started playing at Red Rock, but LiveJournal says our official first show was August 7, 2004, and we were looking for a name on July 17. So "two and a half years" is a pretty good estimate.

Current Music: "3000 Miles"

Hi everyone. I'm not going to do a year-in-review or -in-advance post, just say what's going on right now:

Kate and I are up at her parents' place in the mountains near Denver. I was hoping to fly out with her, breaking a long streak of not traveling by air, but by the time I got organized, plane tickets were really expensive. So I took Amtrak. A long trip, made longer (39 hours!) by bad weather and Union Pacific, but mostly relaxing. I took pictures, but I forgot to bring the card reader that would let me upload them.

New albums are in the air! Tin Cat laid down basic tracks last month at our friend Cameron's cool new studio. I've been working on a little home studio for DeatHat, and Kate's been thinking about what'll be on the full-length record. And I'm having hazy gossamer ideas about a possible solo project.

Somewhat surprisingly, I applied for a job last week. I've been doing contract work since PlaceWare and I parted ways in 2003; this is the first time I've tried to get a full-time, permanent position. It sounds really cool. I'll tell you more if it pans out.

I've spent a lot of time today reading about Leslie Harpold. It looks like this year's Advent calendar won't be finished.

She had an amazing life, not all good but all full. I didn't know her well--she was a friend of friends--but last year when we were both planning our escapes from the Bay Area to the Upper Midwest, we shared reasons and advice and good wishes. Like many of her Internet friends, I almost got around to meeting her.

Another thing I wanted advice on last year was charitable giving. She recommended Modest Needs, a highly efficient anti-poverty organization that seeks mostly small donations and uses them to help people in need with small emergency expenses. If you can spare money for a good cause this holiday season/tax year, you might do it here and think of Leslie.

A while ago I read that Tom Waits's Bone Machine is one of Norah Jones's favorite albums. Her record Come Away With Me was so smooth and polite, and his quite the opposite... it was something to contemplate.

I just read this in an interview with S. Husky Höskulds, about the Grammy award for Come Away With Me:

It was a pretty bitter sweet experience - to be honest. The fact that we made a beautiful, raw, emotional 'Tom Waits - sounding' record was great. The fact that the record company didn't have to balls to put it out, and had someone else retrack a lot of it, and then remix the whole thing, in a 'diet' version, was not that great. Actually, now that I think of it, it wasn't that bittersweet at all. Seems to me it was almost all bitter... There's really nothing quite like getting an Engineering GRAMMY for the crappiest, most watered down sounding record you've been a part of.

I'd love to hear the pre-diet version of that record.

Current Music: Tom Waits, "Earth Died Screaming"

Rummaging through old bookmarks, I found one for the IRS's "Market Segment Specialization Program" guide for "Entertainment - Music Industry". Looks like they no longer publish it. Thanks, IRS! Guess I'll go into the laundromat industry instead.

Update: Google and UncleFed found me a copy of it, from 1994. Turns out it was intended as a guide for auditors, not musicians. Parts of it might be pretty dated, which would explain the decision to withdraw it. But some things are always current:

Musicians who have not reached an income level sufficient to hire business
managers often have a poor record keeping system. This doesn't appear to be due
to an intent to cheat or defraud the Government; rather, it seems to be due to the
taxpayers' basic lack of concern for these types of matters. These taxpayer are
artists and are totally committed to their work and doing whatever it takes to
become a success. Preparation of their yearly tax returns is an afterthought and
the quality of the records they maintain to support their tax returns often bear this
out.

I'm not sure I'm going to do anything with it, but I like the idea of World Week, an end-of-year holiday that celebrates the populated world, continent by continent. With food (optional).

(Via

shetterly, whose idea it was in the first place.)

Bernie Sanders, the socialist from Vermont, is now in the Senate.

Amy Klobuchar beat rising Republican star Mark Kennedy in Minnesota, and Keith Ellison became the first Muslim in Congress.

Katherine Harris, Florida's Secretary of State in 2000, and Ken Blackwell, Ohio's in 2004, lost their races for senator and governor of their respective states.

We don't know who won yet, but Montana's Jon Tester made a strong showing, at least.

The Democrats took control of the House, and may still take the Senate. Also at least six governorships, several state legislatures, and pretty much all of New Hampshire.

South Dakota rejected its legislature's exceedingly strict abortion ban.

Nancy Pelosi will be Speaker of the House (and the first woman to hold that job).

California voted down a parental notification law and a misleading "eminent domain" initiative.

Claire McCaskill won in Missouri, and as of now it looks like the initiative to fund stem cell research did too.

Initiatives to raise the minimum wage succeeded in every state ballot they were on.

The word is that the American people have voted "for change", and we could sure use some. Now that there's a mandate for change, it's time to see if the media acknowledge it, and the Democrats use it.

There were disappointments too, but I feel really hopeful tonight.

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Erik Ostrom: drowning.org

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