bloody sunday

bloody sunday in ireland was more than 38 years ago and yet justice was finally served. (i love justice. i savor it. i require it.)

when i read this story today, (after reading this blog post,) i was excited to see some real justice. the key facts of what happened on bloody sunday in derry, (northern ireland,) are outlined in the saville report, which took all of these 38 years to arrive at the conclusion that the actions of members of the british army were unjustified and unjustifiable.

nowadays we can look backwards and enjoy consensus on myriad points of justice, which were contested by masses of people in their time. i think of the warren commission report and the fact that some parts are sealed until 2017, (and can then remain sealed by executive order,) and the injustice confounds me.

all justice is important but slow justice is impotent.

writing this blog post is like trying to run with my shoelaces tied. this ilk of blog post, the class of entries having to do with political issues and ideas, makes for hardly readable, nearly incomprehensible essays and i really do not know why. i have had trouble organizing my thoughts on these things. it seems i start with one idea i think worthy of exploration then it seems the ideas themselves, those connected to the main, feel like they must be connected in a certain way and before i know it i have connected so many tangents, (or large ideas,) the piece itself sounds like altruistic proverbs at best, or folksy, uneducated ramblings at worst.

the point i want to make here is that it is good to look back and recognize truth. it is important to seek justice everywhere at every level. it is even good to hold people accountable, the perpetrators of crimes as well as the systems that support them. this video was posted at firedoglake and shows the faces of some of these irish citizens, who peacefully protested imperialist policies of their british occupiers, (some suffering a martyr's death,) and helps illuminate the plight of masses of humanity.

what to read

i will be the first to admit i can't read everything but then, it is awfully positive that there is so much good stuff out there to read, (though it looks like a coffee cup on the sea compared to all the bad published word out there.)

the header above links to a glenn greenwald story from salon.com. i used to read salon regularly but for whatever reason i had not been reading it recently. i happened to check in today however, and was rewarded with this thoughtful piece by greenwald.

it is interesting how that works, too. years ago i read salon and talkingpointsmemo.com religiously. lately i have been reading firedoglake and alternet mostly. huffpo gets me intermittently. i read mark morford regularly. i read a few blogs. i used to read mediamatters regularly but probably haven't been there in six months. great site, but who has the time? i get my sports from yahoo, espn or edgeofsports.

anyways, i wanted to share the article and the sense of pleasant surprise i got from visiting a site that had been out of my rotation a little bit.

bests and faves and lists

christy hardin smith has a fun post over at firedoglake this morning. (it is linked in the header.) as of now, 1.5 hours after she posted it there are nearly 200 comments. the fire puppies are having fun with this thread/stroll down memory lane. i thought i'd answer the questions right here. (christy's questions are in red. my answers in blue. would love to see some comments on this post if anyone happens to read it.)

Best concert you ever saw? Where, when, and who?

radiohead at the hollywood bowl in support of amnesiac, (i think?) this is a tough one because of course i want to say it was radiohead at the santa barbara bowl. i want to mention the night i saw tool, porno for pyros, fishbone, and alice in chains at the palladium. u2 at the san diego sports arena the night i shook bono's hand during the show was pretty awesome. (11th row?) pearl jam from the 3rd row at the fargo dome. i saw de la soul, the sugarcubes, pil and new order once at aztec stadium and it was perhaps the most sun-drenched, youthful day of my existence. u2 in denver with my brother was the bomb. i think we grooved more to the opening act, rage against the machine, than u2 that night on the pop mart tour. rage against the machine at the palladium, the democratic national convention or coachella was pretty awesome. tom morello at the el rey this past autumn was memorable. frank black at the glass house in pomona. the pixies at the universal amphitheatre when frank black went all psychedelic and had his guitar decked out in black lights and on a bungee cord so he could bounce it reverberating off the ground. the scorpions with bon jovi was a great show and a night that ended around 8am. the night chaka khan kissed me on the cheek was cool. in the 6th row in wisconsin for the tibetan freedom concert i got to see eddie vedder that day, along with run dmc, the beastie boys, rage, tracy chapman, blondie, the cult, the roots and others. i saw a cool benefit concert one night at the wiltern which featured mike ness, (solo,) eddie vedder, (all by himself,) and beck, who brought thom yorke out for a song.) u2 at the long beach civic auditorium from about the 30th row, standing on fold-up chairs the entire show to see over the heads of everyone in front of us in 1983, with bono waving that white flag around... ahh but alas, it is radiohead. it would be radiohead if i got to see them again tomorrow.

Best album EVAR?

i am going to go with u2's achtung baby.

If I could see any live performance past, present or future -- who would it be and why?

jeff buckley at the sin e coffe house in nyc. that one was easy. why? because i never saw him live and yet, because i have listened to every second of every live thing he recorded countless times. because i lived with jeff buckley for seasons metaphorically, times when life was hard and depression sunk in like a stone in water. jeff buckley's grace was with me in those times, perhaps feeding my feelings of despair but comforting me at the same time. there were weekend when i came home from work on friday and never came out of my house until i had to go to work on monday morning. in between i listened to jeff during all waking hours, wallowing in self-pity, desperate and alone. it's weird how you can miss a time like that all while hoping you never, ever end up in such a place again. jeff was an unbelievable talent and the fact he left the world early only increases that sense of wishing i had seen him perform live. and whether it would have been at sin e or the bataclan in paris, any of those early shows when he was working out who he would become as an artist, when he had the hat in front of him and played requests for cash to pay his rent, wow-i wish i had been there.

Song you've found yourself humming along to lately that you are embarrassed to admit you like?
hmm. if i like it i am usually not embarrased by it. there is this song...i don't know who sings it but the chorus she keeps singing is, 'i'm in trouble..." (just googled it. it's pink.)

Song that always gets stuck in your brain, no matter how much you loathe it?

haven't had one of these in a long time. i remember once upon a time when it was the nookie by limp bizkit.

Recording artist you'd most like to see struck with laryngitis?

kid rock.

Cover song you'd most like to see attempted?

i would love to hear radiohead slow down men at work's it's a mistake and radiohead it up a bit.

If you could put together your dream band, who would be in it?

eddie vedder crooning. jeff buckley on lead guitar. thom yorke on keyboards. dave grohl on drums. my friend dave lenci on bass.

Best vocals EVAR?

i guess i would say buckley on a live version of lover, you should've come over. still, thom yorke on you and whose army or bono on the live version of bad from wide awake in america is pretty hard to dismiss. that from the mars volta just wails, too.

Best guitar playing EVAR?

i'll go old school on this and say jimmy page on the song remains the same. there are moments when the photography of that day could not keep up with his fingers. i think page's guitar playing just killed about a decade of guitarists who simply quit because they knew they could never reach his plateau.

Best song in the history of music is _______?

black, by pj? nooooo... one, by u2? i am the walrus? what i got? rainy day woman? song 2? true love waits? blue monday? some girls? hey? come undone? haile sellase up your ass? no, i am going to go with famoous blue raincoat by leonard cohen. ahh, now that is sublime.

ian welsh

i have to direct you to this firedoglake blog entry from ian welsh. if you click on his name in the header, you will go to the post.

ian welsh is pointing out that ben bernanke and henry paulson and all the rest are basically screwing us all over. if welsh is correct america will be the land without opportunity for some years to come. those who have administered this economic bailout, have taken great care to ensure those who caused it will not have to pay for the massive amounts of money recently printed by the federal reserve.

the idea seems to be, according to welsh, that the guy's who hold the levers of control are trying to keep things just barely acceotable to the masses so that later as any amount of prosperity returns, it can be gleaned right off the top to pay for the investment that is this printed cash.

it is a great age we live in. the internet affords us a previously unfathomable ability to communicate. so if bernanke and paulson and obama and even krugman, are willing to sell us all down the river by signing off on all this, we are fortunate to have people like ian welsh who blog about it and are able to translate economic facts and theory into layman's terms. hence, why i am sharing this with you.