bring the noyz

This is the video for their first big single (sorry, but they won't let ya embed it):

Flobots - Handlebars

Socially conscious and politically aware live band no-sample hip-hop from some Colorado boys.

Kinda reminds me of the good ol' days.

The Good Doctor Noyz says "check 'em out."

Not yet convinced?

Well then try this and I think you'll agree, these fellas might be going somewhere:


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(pseudo live-blogging tonight's Kentucky / Oregon Democratic Primary)

I just finished watching Obama's non-declarative victory speech live from Des Moines, Iowa.

I must tell you this one thing, right now, and without a moment's hesitation.

It was the whitest crowd I've seen at a presidential candidate speech all campaign season. This, my dear reader, if you are cynically inclined may lead you to suspect some campaign media tweaking shenanigans, especially since Obama got trounced so hard by the hillbillies in West Virginia and Kentucky.

Let me reassure you, my dear reader, lest you fear racial manipulation of the crowd for the sake of the television cameras, it's just Iowa.

Please don't be shocked and I urge thee to take no offense, but I only half joked to a dear college friend from an ethnically and culturally diverse background that until I moved to The Sprawl I thought people of color were a Hollywood special effect.

And as you may or may not be aware, my dear reader, Iowa is the land of my birth, the land where my ancestors tilled, plowed, played, and prayed while eaking out a living in the windswept fields of the grassy plains. It is the land where I was born and raised and taught what it means to be a citizen in one of the states of the great totality that is the United States.

(Cripes, I am so sorry about that flowery rhetorical shit. Le'me just come clean now and admit that I'm on my third double gin and tonic since I started watching the news coverage an hour or so ago.)

I do think it quite interesting that in all the bombastic yet guarded talk about issues of race and gender there is an 800 pound gorilla in the room that no one seems willing to address or even acknowledge. Not even Pat Buchanan, and we all know he is as crazy as a loon and just hope someone drives him home in time to take his meds.

(To Pat Buchanan, the Abe Simpson of presidential campaign political coverage!)

Back to the topic at hand. . .

In all this talk about black and white for some reason nobody is mentioning the brown. What happened to the brown? Has Lou Dobbs suddenly achieved total victory? Problem solved? Game over?

I think this is most interesting given that one week ago, scarcely 100 miles from where Obama stood by way the corn stealing crows fly, ICE conducted the largest raid in the history of the state.

So why no mention? I guarandamntee there was not one person in attendance at tonight's non-victory celebration who didn't know about it or hasn't recently discussed it over pie and coffee or a coupla cold ones with their friends, neighbors and half the danged town.

I could be cynical and suggest that it is a no-win for the aspiring if not yet officially declared Democratic Party nominee. But as I have "hope" and I desire "change" I will not give into my cynicism. No, not tonight.

Hmm. . .

So anyways.

In all honesty, I rather proudly do have an idealized and somewhat romanticized memory of my youth in that fair state. They were my "Evel Knievel" days, they were my "Tom Sawyer" days.

This might be the gin talking, but it would not be unfair to say that my almost mythologized feelings towards Iowa are not unlike what many have speculated as Tolkien's creation of The Shire to describe his feelings towards the English.

Given that. . .

Please tell my my dear reader, how come when I saw Obama walk out through the adoring crowd towards the podium I had a terrifying visceral flash that made me feel for all the world like Sam looking in the Mirror of Galadriel?
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Down on your luck? Can't afford $4.00 a gallon gas? Need a little extra cash?

Well, then spy on your neighbors and rat out your friends!

As Prices Rise, Crime Tipsters Work Overtime

"as callers turn in neighbors, grandchildren or former boyfriends in exchange for a little cash."

Just in case you were wondering or perhaps a bit confused, this is not a good thing.
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I had originally intended to further ramble on about this whole dubya gave up golf mess. I somewhat cleverly (I thought) had planned on ranting about this now oft repeated and endlessly looped quote:

“I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” he said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”

I was going to opine brilliantly about it being dubya's finest "Let them eat cake" moment.

Then, of course, I remembered the eventual outcome of that incident.

I wish to in no way suggest or otherwise imply that I, somehow, someway, under any circumstance; would ever encourage, advocate, or even entertain an inkling of such a notion.

That would be a very wrong interpretation; and it could, if given the proper set of Orwellian or Brazilian circumstances be construed as a terroristic threat, if on the oft chance any hypersensitive humorless black suit with shiny black shoes type happens to stumble upon this posting because some darpish internet scouring filter lead them to the writings of this humble correspondent.

And that would be bad.

Very bad indeed.

So instead I shall pose a question.

Given the whole aforementioned dubya golf fiasco and dubya's odd remarks today while hanging with Yahweh's peeps in Israel, I most humbly inquire. . .

Does the current office holder of the President of the United States of America now more closely resemble either:

a) your drunken uncle who staggers around family gatherings saying questionable, outrageous, or outright offensive things but is tolerated by everybody because we all know he he ain't never been quite right in the head and besides he's family so ya just gotta smile and nod and make sure somebody sticks around to drive him home?

or

b) that really annoying kid who lived down the hall in the dorm during your freshman year. You remember that guy, the guy who thought he was the shiznit because he was from a slightly more affluent suburb. At parties he tended to spill drinks and dominate conversations with cock-blocking ignorance and comments that were inappropriate, inconceivable, or incomprehensible?

I can see it either way.

So please my dear reader, discuss.
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Hah!

This is very sadly getting way to easy, but somehow I just find myself in the mood.

I've always loved this version of this song:



Nope, not even Jesus, and that's just a gah-danged shame.
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Given our current situation, is there really all that much of a difference?

Pray tell me, my dear reader, just what side of the fuckin' glass are we on?

My head is spinning, I say spinning.

I mean really now, what's all this about a warning of disaster? Why that is almost omnipresent and certainly neither novel nor new. Just remember to wrap those covers around you tight when you go to sleep tonight because there is a monster in a turban hiding under your bed.

But this. . .

For the first time, Bush revealed a personal way in which he has tried to acknowledge the sacrifice of soldiers and their families.

“I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” he said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”

Bush said he made that decision after the August 2003 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, which killed Sergio Vieira de Mello, the top U.N. official in Iraq and the organization’s high commissioner for human rights.

“I remember when de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man's life,” he said. “I was playing golf — I think I was in central Texas — and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, ‘It's just not worth it anymore to do.’"

Ah, would that I were able to make such a noble sacrifice for our great nation in a time of war.

And yes, playing golf during a time of war does send the wrong signal.

Right here, right now, I call on you my fellow Americans, to demand that Tiger Woods be immediately arrested and sent to Guantanamo via one of those black sites they operate in some shadowy Eastern European nation. That is um, assuming they can take a moment to spare one of their drug-running planes.

Yeah, verily I call on you, but alas my dear reader, I fear I am already far too late. We may already be naught but oysters.


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So um, I'm watching this show on The History Channel.

Cripes, were those Romans ever some rotten bastards. I mean really now, they were really some mean-ass sumsa'bitches, ya know?
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So like earlier tonight I happened to be channel-surfing and caught the tail end of a story on my local news about the impending nuptials of dubya's daughter (and the great grand-daughter of an American Nazi).

Sadly I had already missed the Extra about the wedding event of the year.

I was only about half-way paying attention because I knew if I looked directly at the screen the bile would rise up within me and forcibly extricate itself from my body. I swear to freaking Lord Almighty I heard some poor hick small town bastard say this with sniveling pride and subservient glee in his own redneck voice:

"Remember when Princess Di married? Well, it was a big, big thing, you know. ... It's `Wow — this is royalty,'" said Bill Johnson, owner of the Yellow Rose gift shop. "The president and the family — they are really considered royalty by many folks."

(nicely quoted for you, my dear reader, to read here, if not to hear as I did, in an AP article)

If this were a sitcom this would be the moment when I take a drink and spit it with dramatic comedic effect all over the other actors on the set.

Why I do declare, I almost threw my freakin' drink at the screen. Believe me, my dear reader, it was neither the fear of breaking our aging very non-HD but still digital conversion ready TV set nor the loss of a generous pour of cheap vodka and tonic that would splatter and crash on the floor that stayed my hand.

Nay, no nay.

It was the sad realization that this "news" story was worth no more of my time than I would spend picking up a pile of dog shit I passed on the street.

But there was something about something that guy said that just stuck in my craw(ford).

(Sorry, couldn't resist the pun.)

"The president and the family — they are really considered royalty by many folks."

Royalty?

Fuck off.

I'm no freakin' historian and the fluoride in the water maybe working to make me stupid, but I damn sure remember learning something back in my school days about how the founders of this once great nation, that's right the gah-damned U. S. of Fucking A, as in ASS-KICKING, fought some war or some such shit all because they were righteously pissed off at all that royalty crap. As I recall from my lessons, they were fed up as fuck and just weren't going to take it anymore.

Well, lemme tell ya. . .

Ain't nobody royalty. Not to me.

Nor to you if your still half-way worth a damn.

". . . despise riches. . . hate tyrants. . . take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men. . . "
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So give me some.

Or give me two dollars.


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As much as I dearly appreciate, respect, and truly admire the recent commentary about this. . .

I must confess, my dear reader, that somehow it seems you may be missing my point.

So listen. . .

Try again.
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