There are so many nooks & crannies on the internet filled with dopeness. It is always a pleasure to fall into another.

(Watering Hole by Amy Stein) {via}

And you say, Goddamn
This is the dope jam

I started Gravity’s Rainbow this weekend. So far, I am loving it — I hope that I am able to finish it. My track record for fiinishing “long” books isn’t the best, even for books I love. (I’m looking at you, Infinite Jest & The Recognitions). Hopefully, public shaming of myself on the internet will help. Also consider this to be an invitation to be my goodreads friend.

Tell your friends, to get with my friends
And we can be friends

Speaking of Infinite Jest, I hear that David Foster Wallace’s unfinished novel may be teetering towards publication. Without knowing all the facts, this doesn’t sit well with me. Well…no reason my hangups should be yours, too.

The declaration that we have always opposed the war, is true or false accordingly as one may understand the term ” opposing the war.” If to say ” the war was unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced by the President,” be opposing the war, then the Whigs have very generally opposed it. Whenever they have spoken at all, they have said this; and they have said it on what has appeared good reason to them: The marching an army into the midst of a peaceful Mexican settlement, frightening the inhabitants away, leaving their growing crops and other property to destruction, to you may appear a per¬fectly amiable, peaceful, unprovoking procedure; but it does not appear so to us. So to call such an act, to us appears no other than a naked, impudent absurdity, and we speak of it accordingly. But if, when the war had begun, and had become the cause of the country, the giving of our money and our blood, in common with yours, was support of the war, then it is not true that we have always opposed the war. With few individual exceptions, you have constantly had our votes here for all the necessary supplies. And, more than this, you have had the services, the blood, and the lives of our political brethren in every trial, and on every field.

And if Obama be our Lincoln, and the Mexican-American War be our Iraq, then where is our Frederick Douglass?

The determination of our [...] President to prosecute the war, and the probability of his success in wrining from the people men and money to carry it on, is made evident frorm the puny opposition arrayed against him. No politician of any considerable distinction or eminence seems willing to hazard his popularity with his party… by an open and unqualified disapprobation of the war. None seem willing to take their stand for peace at all risks; and all seem willing that the war should be carried on, in some form or other.

Slightly related note: I dreamt that Obama chose Bob Kerrey as his running mate. Ummm, TGIT?

I am pretty sure I’ll finish The Recognitions and Underworld. I’m still not sure about IJ. The next question for me to address is whether to start over or take off where I left off. After 5 seconds of thought, I’m going to go with take off where I left off.

What the heck: Mountain Goats – This Year [MP3]

²Interesting to see that the word “perseverance” has roots in Calvinistic doctrine.

En route to dinner, we stopped off at City Lights² — which is a damn good reason to go to the NB — where I opted for the paperback of Black Swan Green over the hardback The Savage Detectives³.

Dinner at Tomasso‘s for the first time in a long time. Food is still very good, but seemed less crowded than years ago.

Enrico’s all boarded up.

Dessert at Stella’s, who thankfully offer a bathroom to customers. TMI?

The Rake comes back in Black Garder Belt.

¹ For The Record – the margaritass at Vesuvio are, how you say?…..butt.
²Kate Bush occupied the in-store music, and consequently my brain for the next 3.5 days.
³Trying to remain steadfast in my vow to never buy another hardback, in favor of biting the bullet and holding out for paperbacks. Black Swan Green is one of the first books released, then bought, since my vow was made last year. Seeing will probably be the next one to come through.

Along similar lines, Chris Ware talks to the Omaha World-Herald about his upcoming graphic novel, set in Omaha:

Q. What do you remember or miss about Omaha?

A. Mostly, I miss all those things that are no longer there, like family and friends who have died or moved away or the grocery store where my mom and I used to go shopping, my school. All pretty embarrassing, sentimental stuff. I try to visit the family and friends who are still there, of course. I generally only get back every few years, but it’s enough to know that some of it is still really there and not just a part of my fading memory.

I’m still loving Simon Joyner and the Fallen Men’s latest record, Skeleton Blues (one of my top 10 albums of last year, though I have no ‘list’). Here’s a track: The Only Living Boy In Omaha [mp3]. Do pick up the album, you won’t be disappointed.

In addition, the book provides a crash course in several aspects of 60′s culture: its often gaseous rhetoric, its reliance on mahatmas and soothsayers, its endless bail-fund benefits and sometimes dubious appeals to conscience, its thriving population of informers, its contribution to the well-being of lawyers, its candyland expectations and obstinate denials of reality, its fatal avoidance of critical thinking, its squalid death by its own hand. That still leaves many meritorious elements largely outside Leary’s sphere: civil rights, the antiwar movement, music and art, the impulse toward communitarianism, to name a few. In part because of Leary, however, ideals and delusions were encouraged to interbreed, their living progeny being avid consumerism and toothless dissent.

Maybe get some caffeine to make me focus on the task at hand.  Look at this, my ten dollar bill is from 1950.  Hmm, wonder if its worth anything…

Yeah, I didn’t see that one coming.

Nice stache–just who is this MojoMan anyway, beyond a Clavenesque answer machine?

What the F-ck?  He too loves The Soup–this new guy may well be on par with John Henson.  A best-of tomorrow after the Sopranos, that might be nice.

But back to the Mojo:  Definitely Liberals!

Food for thought to be sure….  Probably an overdose of something fun.

Cubs just started, enough.

Paris Hilton’s Deposition:

When asked if she knew his last name, Hilton replied: “It is like a weird Greek name. Like Douglas.”

Falafel’s uncertain origin:

Recent culinary trends have seen the triumph of the chickpea falafel over the field bean falafel!

The South will rise again:

In the years that followed, Bolivia deregulated its banks, reformed its tax system, privatized its five biggest state-owned companies, and tried to attract more foreign investment. But during the past fifteen years the country’s per-capita economic growth has been just 0.5 per cent a year, and today half of all Bolivians live on less than two dollars a day. Bolivia has always been a very poor country with a few very rich people, but inequality has worsened, with the élite skimming off most of the little wealth that has been created.

After President Bush’s disastrous visit to Latin America, it’s unnerving to realize that his presidency still has more than three years to run. An administration with no agenda and no competence would be hard enough to live with on the domestic front. But the rest of the world simply can’t afford an American government this bad for that long..

One example is the rise of the meritocracy and the accompanying obsession with test scores, school admission and the acquisition of badges of taste and intellect recognizable by other members of the educated elite. That group, largely composed of political liberals, has become more concerned with distinguishing itself from average Americans than with reaching out to them. This development is not unrelated to the fact that average Americans have been steadily deserting liberalism and the Democratic Party.

Thank God for the Right Wing. They’re kicking Republican Butt.