the song says let's be happy, so let's be happy


photo by dave jones.

The Foreign Press will be playing dc's black cat this Thursday (June 8) supporting The Caribbean. Doors @ 9, $7. Come on out!

* Top ten conservative idiots. excerpt:

"2. Karl Zinsmeister

"Say hello to George W. Bush's new domestic policy adviser Karl Zinsmeister, who's only been on the job for five minutes and is already up to his neck in it. The Zpinmeister admitted last week that he 'did something wrong when he took a newspaper profile of himself, altered quotes and text, and then posted it on a Web site without noting the changes,' according to the Washington Post.

"Back in 2004, the Zpinmeister was interviewed by the Syracuse New Times and said, 'People in Washington are morally repugnant, cheating, shifty human beings.' When the article was reprinted on the American Enterprise Institute's website, the quote read as follows: 'I learned in Washington that there is an 'overclass' in this country stocked with cheating, shifty human beings that's just as morally repugnant as our 'underclass.'' How did that happen? Possibly because Karl Zinmeister was, at the time, the editor of the American Enterprise Institute's magazine.

"The Zpinmeister made several other edits to the original article where he felt that there had been 'misunderstandings or truncated notes' - but accidentally forgot to note the changes on the AEI website. How absent-minded of him.

"Don't worry though - as usual, this lack of integrity was once again brushed aside by the White House - according to the Post, press secretary Tony Snow said that 'Zinsmeister erred in making the changes, but he was well-intentioned.' Oh really, Tony? How so? 'This was done not out of animosity; it was an attempt to set the record straight and he did it in an unartful way,' clarified Snowjob.

"So I guess this is just item 127,846 on the Bush administration's list of 'unartful but well-intentioned'" errors.

"One last thing: Back in 2003 Karl Zinsmeister wrote in the National Review, 'many of the journalists observable in this (Iraq) war theater are bursting with knee-jerk suspicions and antagonisms for the warriors all around them. A significant number are whiny and appallingly soft. … I almost wished there would be a very loud explosion very nearby just to shut up their rattling.'

"Looks like Zinsmeister has been getting his wish. The recent deaths of two CBS journalists in Iraq brings the total number of journalists killed in that conflict up to 71, which is two higher than the number of journalists that were killed in all of World War II."

* The Rude Pundit on the top 50 conservative song list that's making its way around:

"John, John J. Miller, Johnny J, JJ, what the fuck ever, you over at the National Review, with your new list of Conservative Rock Songs #51-101, your sequel to the sad cry for help that is the list of 1-50. Listen to the Rude Pundit. It's not that we on the left are saying, as you put it, 'Hands off my rock music, right-wing scum!' No, no, we said that back in the 1980s when the PMRC (led by Tipper Gore, you know) tried to get music like 'Little Red Corvette'" by Prince (in your new list) stigmatized, censored, banned, even, from the airwaves or out of the reach of teenagers, the young consumers whose minds might be influenced in a conservative direction by Prince's 'cautionary tale,' as you say.

"No, no, you see, you can have Mike and the Mechanics, Rush, Extreme, Iron Maiden, Sammy Hagar, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Journey, the Hooters, and P.O.D. Really. Create a conservative radio station of the damned on satellite so you can fuck your wife to the Hooters. Try it. Nothin' says, 'I want some righteous 'tang' like the Hooters.

"Just, you know, back the fuck off on things like, say, the Police and the Dead Kennedys. Believe it or not, liberals kinda hated the Kremlin and Pol Pot, too. We hate all repression. We hate everyone who tries to tell us that liberation, like the kind represented by the fuck rhythms of rock and roll, is to be feared.

"Oh, and shit, yeah, you can't even have Dylan in his born-again period. 'Scuse the Rude Pundit now - he's gotta get mighty stoned to his scratchy vinyl copy of Slow Train Coming."

* Jeff Johnson has an op-ed in the new york times. excerpt:

"Last month, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers rejected a proposal to create a .xxx domain, keeping lovers of Internet pornography in a virtual Stone Age when it comes to quickly locating prurient material. Here are some domains that should be considered next:

".cat The domain of choice for the involuntarily celibate.

".sal For rotund fellows who love pizza and the people who love them.

".wah The preferred suffix for sites that feature copious MPEG's of guitar solos.

".sod For English inebriates who also dabble in landscaping, or, just, you know, mow lawns for booze money. Expect these Web sites to lay fallow during the World Cup.

".ehh For sites that, ehh, never mind.

".wha For scholars of Thomas Pynchon's "V."

".rub For masseuses and masseurs.

".ewe For shepherds only!

".lie For dating Web sites that do not require accurate photos of the individuals who sign up.

".pip For Web sites that, at first glance, appear to be amusing, but really aren't.

".rug Connoisseurs of wigs, toupees, hair plugs and comb-overs belong here.

".gel The Internet home for men who use too much hair-styling product.

".tug Finally, a destination for the millions, if not billions, of tug-of-war aficionados in cyberspace.

".zit Real pimple advice for real teenagers. Sponsored by Snickers and Clearasil."

* "We hate poetry that has a palpable design on us...Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle or amaze it with itself, but with its subject." -John Keats, Letter to John Hamilton Reynolds (February 3, 1818), quoted in Letters of John Keats (H.E. Rollins, ed.; 1958), vol. 1. [via]