Trent Reznor Get Out the Vote Campaign

I bought a Nine Inch Nails CD off of the band's website some time ago, and am now fortunate enough to be on their mailing list and get a sporadic email from Trent Reznor himself. Usually it's an advertisement for a concert or some such. This email was a bit different...

Next Tuesday we will elect the next President of the United States. The result will have great consequences for the nation.

This election offers a choice is between two men with dramatically different visions of the future. We have strong feelings about this choice. But we feel even more strongly that all Americans, regardless of political preference, have a stake in the outcome and should vote in this critical election.

This is likely to be a close election. Your vote matters. Please use it and make a difference.

Sincerely,
Trent Reznor

I find it ironic that someone known for his dark, cynical lyrics can be so confident that one vote in 130 million matters. And more so, that it will actually make a difference. I can see him writing lyrics now...

I, made a difference today
punching out a chad
Focus on the ballot
hangers and dimples don't count

Lance Armstrong Under Kazak Gypsy Spell!

Proof positive! Either he or the Kazak Cycling Federation has been put under some sort of psychotropic trance, because this is just too amazing to be true...without the aid of some black magic.

Lance Armstrong to Race for Kazakhstan!?!

Bush's Book Shelf

A lot of the problems of the last eight years in this country and the world are not the direct fault of Prez Bush. A lot of the failures are systemic, although Bush being at the helm of this system certainly did not help. And it is possible that many of the issues we face today coincidentally happened to fall during Bush's tenure. Economic downturns are cyclical, as is destruction of the constitution, the use of state sponsored violence to further power and money hungry interests, etc. etc. And even though the following comment may too be coincidental, it was still brilliant to point out. One of my favorite columnists, former LA Times columnist and now editor-in-chief of TruthDig.com, notes,

"The bookends of the Bush years are the Enron debacle and the federal bailout of bankers drunk on their own greed."

If those are the bookends, its even more frightening to think of what lies between those place holders...

Blog Roll - Bertha and Brazilian Girls

Its been a while, so I am going to write what is known in the blogosphere as the blog roll. Technically, the Blog Roll is one's list of blogs that they read through, usually filtered to one place through an RSS feed. Instead of directing many blogs to one place, this is many topics, mostly updates, in one blog.

Some time around 4th of July weekend, I happened to be watching the weather channel on TV, and in hindsight, I remember hearing something about the 2nd tropical storm of the season. It appears as though Bertha was gesticulating somewhere over the West Coast of Africa, contemplating at what speed she would travel to the East Coast of the United States and just how much shit she should fuck up. Little did I know, or could I have predicted at the time, but the bitch decided to just chill over the Atlantic Ocean for a week and brew some fine long period ground swell. And because of that righteous woman, who I think I may name my first born after, I would have my first ever East Coast surf sessions. It is no small task to go surfing from DC. Waking up at 4:30, 3 hours in the car, multiple meeting spots for six people to cram into a pick up truck, stops at WaWa market for gas and coffee, borrowing someone's girlfriend's sister's husband's 7'6" fun board (and rash guard), an voi la - you are at the beach. But to say the least, it was worth every second of effort and by any standards that I have ever set, that was one hell of a fine day of surfing. Head high or plus, glassy, not much of a crowd to speak of, sun. It was pretty ideal. Really as good a day as I have ever had at the Cali beach breaks (the point breaks are another story).

That very same Saturday night I went to see Brazilian Girls at the 9:30 club. In hindsight, I am extremely glad that the tickets were free, because I would have been pissed! I should have known that because it was a late night show starting at midnight, I should have been much more drunk. But I was so damned tired from surfing and being awake all day, I just couldn't pull. The show from the start was uninspiring. The lead singer is talented - the whole band is talented in some respects - but she can't carry the show. She is backed by a steady rhythm section, but the only melody is a key board. Not much substance or depth. It sounded a bit like someone singing "Girl From Iponema" on karaoke with some house beats mixed in here and there. And I think the lighting tech was more intoxicated than the musicians or the crowd. He/She kept shining the flood lights on the inebriated crowd, causing on multiple occassions some drunken revelers to believe that the show was over and it was time to vomit on the bar. But no...the show continued. And just when the whole situation couldn't get much more annoying, enter audience girl taking her top off and dancing on stage. Only to be followed by about 50 more of Washington's socialite power-crowd dancing on stage topless. During the last two songs I couldn't even see the band. But not because the 3 band members were blocked by the Dance Dance Revolution practice session, but because I couldn't take my eyes off the 200 pounder swinging her bare utters in a demonstration of what could only be described as self confidence and swagger. Truly hypnotizing. I have been searching the web for a picture, but no luck.

Cocaine Cowboys - Mexico Edition

I recently watched a documentary film called "Cocaine Cowboys." It chronicles the rise of the cocaine trade in Miami in the 1970s and 1980s. Fascinating film that I highly recommend. It interviews a few of the key players, some - two American transporters - who where released from long prison sentences in 2004, another - a Columbian hit-man - who is still serving a life sentence. The most fascinating part to me was that through the 70s and earliest part of the 80s, these people - mostly Columbians and Cubans, with some American help - were importing billions of dollars of cocaine a month almost unstopped and undetected. The high-rise, high-class Miami you see today was funded almost entirely by this drug money of the 1970s. The trade could have continued unabated today if it wasn't for the murders that started to happen in the 80s. Turns out the Columbians went crazy and ruined it for themselves. They just started killing each other...in public, in night clubs, in late night raids, en masse sparing no woman or child. The feds didn't really show up until the murders started occuring.

Which brings me to present day Northern Mexico. I was forwarded another article about the drug wars going on in Northern Baja and some of the fallout on American tourists. The article reports on an uncovered DEA document that states,

"since 2005, one-thousand people have been kidnapped in Mexico, while 43 are known to have died and many have disappeared. In Tijuana alone, in just the first half of last year, 91 kidnappings were reported -- roughly one victim every other day, according to the report."

The article concludes that the violent inter-gang killings has resulted in a violent fight for power, the robbing of tourists and the emergence of kidnapping as a lucrative alternative to drug running. The kidnappers are earning an estimated $6 million per month and have made Mexico home to the most number of kidnappings in Latin America - recently surpassing Columbia.

If we are witnessing a rerun of the Cocaine Cowboys, it seems to have regenerated in a more violent, and more destructive form. In the Miami wars, drug cartels targeted each other for control over the drug trade, and bystanders were often caught in the middle. Now, the bystanders - the tourists, surfers, lobster seekers, retired folks buying cheap prescription drugs, underage drinkers - are the targets.

The movie ends with most of the old cartel people dying or getting arrested. The corrupt and complicit Dade county police department was cleaned out. How this one will end I have no idea. To be sure, the Mexican tourist industry will suffer severely. This could be the only thing to motivate Mexican authorities to get their act together and clean out their own corrupt and complicit security agencies. Or, a more likely scenario is that this will blow over. The kidnappings and drug killings will calm down after a dominant cartel wins out, the drug trade will continue, and the tourists will return.

Peter Hansen Smear Campaign

I hate Peter Hansen. Who is PeterHansen? Someone that I dearly hate.

This Paranoid Android...

...just about lost his marbles at Radiohead on Sunday. Instead of getting it all off my chest here, someone else pretty much summed it up for me. This Brightest Young Things blog just about nails it (the pics are pretty good, but they don't really capture the awe-inspiring stage set-up or the catastrpohic weather around us). I would only add a couple of notes. My drive was more like 12 hours from North Carolina, not a measely 3 hours from DC. I had no rain gear to speak of to deal with the torrential down pour. Thanks to my friend Liz's parents, I procured a bright yellow rain jacket that kept the top half of my body completely dry. The bottom half — in board shorts and rainbow sandals — was a different story. My rainbows will take a few weeks to dry out I think. Last, I was dissappointed when Thom Yorke's shot at Capital Hill (something to the effect of "Whats up with those people on Capital Hill? They really fucked it all up, didn't they?) evoked near silence from the crowd. I could only imagine what the response would have been in a place like Seattle or San Fran — or the entire West Coast.

So begins the week of concerts and graduation:
Sunday - Radiohead
Tuesday - Black Keys
Wednesday - Once OK Twice
Thursday - Cut Copy
Friday -Graduation