A Heretical Thought About Once-Beloved Music

I'm about to say something that would make my twenty-year-old self sneer and call me old and out of touch. I recently went back through my CD collection and ripped one particular band's whole oeuvre. I don't have about every other album, and I've come to one conclusion:

Tangerine Dream wasn't really all that good.

Advancing technology gave them vistas undreamed-of when they first sat behind their Moogs in the 1970s, yet they remained the same staid, boring producers of vapidity they were when they had only three channels, a million patchcords, and an analog mixtable.

Even Vangelis evolved more eclectically and more rapidly than Tangerine Dream.

Friday's Brains, No Chaser

Clownhall: Hugh Hewitt's Lie Du Jour

( Nuance is beyond his simple mind. )

It's a worldview, not a delusion!

( Argumentum Ad Hitlerum! )

How to write about the G8 Summit

I love this so much I removed the lj-cut:

An ineffectual international organisation yesterday issued a stark warning about a situation it has absolutely no power to change, the latest in a series of self-serving interventions by toothless intergovernmental bodies.

McCain's Message?

( “Elect a grown-up”? )

Anti-Gay Alabama A.G. Caught Boinking Boyfriend

( Of course he's a Republican! )

Camping Day 5: The Rains Came Down And The Dead Revealed Themselves

We spent the entirety of the next morning trapped in our tent against falling, pounding rain. Kouryou-chan was a little nervous about the thunder, thinking that maybe lightning might strike our tent. Omaha and I had to re-assure her that that was very unlikely indeed.

Walker Point, north side.

Eventually, although the rain didn't stop, we just got sick of each other and ran for the car, hoping to find something better. One item on offer was a little place called Walker Point, apparently a lookout across the whole northwestern valley. Walker Point is actually two points, on opposite sides of a large, flat summit, one looking north and one south, above the clouds and out of the rain, yay.

The birds. Very Hitchcockian.

Once there we opened up a can of chicken and made sandwiches, then walked to the southern point to look around and eat. While we were there a bunch of birds hovered over us very anxiously, desperately waiting for us to drop something. Walker Point must be rather popular as the entire animal populace seemed ready for us to feed them, although we all politely declined. There was more than the usual litter about the place; I ended up picking up an old Fritos bag and bottle caps and stuffing them into my backpack's trash-bag. I declined to pack out someone else's diaper, however.

Bunny. OBEY.

You kinda have to be old-school furry to get the "Obey" part. While we were eating, this bunny likewise came up and started munching the tall grass that grew around one of the fenceposts that kept us all from tumbling over the edge of the point and down into the ravine. It seemed a very calm bunny, just kinda hanging out and not paying us much attention as long as we didn't get too close. After the bunny left and Omaha had escorted Kouryou-chan to one of the bathrooms, Yamaraashi-chan said, "I'm bored!" Classic. Omaha had taken her book away because she'd already finished it and was reading it in lieu of doing anything else, like enjoying her surroundings.

Creepy note.

We walked over to the northern point and there, on the ground just by the wooden fence on that side (the one you can see in the topmost photo) was a scrap of paper. I thought it was just another bit of litter but then I read it: "Cremated remains of Marian R. Ford. Mc Comb Funeral Home." Eww. Even worse, about a meter away, was a pile of ash that was once Marian Rebbecca Ford. Eww eww! The girls thought it was too creepy by far, and Omaha and thought that our already difficult camping trip had descended into the surreal.

Quilcene River

We hiked back to the other point and drove down the mountain. It was overcast down at sea level, but no longer raining, so we drove to Quilcene Falls and decided to hike up the river for about two miles or so. That was a lot of fun, and it at least made up our quota of legwork for the day.

When we got back to the Quilcene campsite, I spotted spigots. This campsite was piped! Omaha and I groused about forgetting the five-gallon water jug, but then I went over and tried to fill my backpacking bottle, only to discover that the water was turned off. Since all the water we've had to drink this week has been hand-forced through an 0.2 micron filter against giardia, this irony was not lost on me.

Cooking dinner

We drove back to our own campsite and proceeded to make dinner. Kouryou-chan ran around with the camera while dinner cooked, although eventually they settled down to reading together in the dark. I noticed as they were sitting in the same camp chair a little note written in Engrish:

This chair can only load 225 lbs maximum. Please do not apply any loads over the above WT. or you may cause the chair broken & injure yourself.

The kettle corn was a failure, but the girls still ate it through three rounds of UNO.

All night, droplets just seemed to hit the tent at random. It wasn't so much raining as simply so humid and misty that droplets were congealing out of the sky one by one and striking the rainfly over the tent. Kinda soothing, really.

( More pictures... )

The logic of Metro

I can understand that Metro, wanting to save money on gas, sends out the lighter, shorter diesels rather than the longer half-electrics to my neighborhood. What I can't understand is why they send out the lighter, shorter diesels during the commute when ridership is up almost 10% and the buses were already uncomfortably crammed for the 35-minute drive before you took away the articulateds?

Ridership is up so they give us smaller, more crowded buses. It's never really been about covenience and comfort, I know, but could they at least pretend?

Stay Classy, Guys

Shortly after John McCain "joked" that it was a good thing our number one export to Iran was cigarettes because "That's a good way of killing them," George W. Bush, boarding his plane upon leaving the G8 Summit: "Goodbye, from the world's greatest polluter." That's a nice final kick to the world's groin.

John McCain's chief economic advisor, Phil Gramm, on the economy: "We have become a nation of whiners. You just hear this constant whining, compalining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline."

The remarks are so bad, McCain's campaign manager had to say "Gramm's comments are not representative of John McCain's views." Brad Delong notes:

Republicans had ideological majorities in Congress from 1981 through 2006 (at least). Republicans held the presidency for all except the eight Clinton years. The policies proposed by the executive, enacted by the legislature, and implemented by the courts over the past generation are Republican policies.

And, to Phil Gramm, these policies must have worked. Hence the cognitiv dissonance created by the fact that people appear to be dissatisfied--and the "nation of whiners" quote: it's an attempt to make sense of the fact that the policies must have worked and the fact that the policies do not seem to be popular.

I would go further and say that they have worked: the Phil Gramm's of the world are not hurting. It's the rest of us who are whining. Gramm yearns for the days before unions and labor laws. We poor schlubs who've actually lost buying power in the past eight years should still be grateful we get to bask in the intellectual brilliance of men like Phil Gramm.

Of course, we all know McCain's economic plan


Is McCain really that bad? Yes, he really is: He has neither the intellectual acumen nor the personal intergrity to be president.