Collected Thoughts 7-30-09

• Rawkblog has an outstanding idea. Go to that link and tell them you want in.
  

• Wallpaper, Kid Static, and Jacob Safari are angling for a summer jam. Methinks they have it.

• Wallpaper also has Doseone in his top friends. lol. That takes me back.

• Roadside Graves is Twittering their tour. By the way, SSPU set the gold standard for Twitouring.
  

• I make a habit of giving Pitchfork shit. (Has anyone from Pitchfork even heard of CGT? I'd be surprised if they have.) I've been reading a lot of their old reviews lately and I've noticed something funny... generally, the further from its inception the worse Pitchfork's taste gets; they undoubtedly praised better music six years ago than they do now. And yet, those old reviews are even more unreadable than today. Though Pitchfork used to have editorial teeth and used to know what was good, their current writing staff is easily more proficient with the crafted word.

• There's a trailer for Wes Anderson's The Fantastic Mr. Fox.
  
  Hrm.
  
  It just looks like a fancified CGI animal Dreamworks comedy to me. In the extreme negative column, this movie will get both the hipster douchebag contingent and the furries all kinds of worked-up and aroused. How is this not a detriment to society?
  

• William Shatner follows nine people on Twitter. Fran Drescher and Elizabeth Taylor are two of them. Weird. He also signs-off his tweets "My best, Bill". Old folks are so adorable!

• The Singularity is near!

• Abominations! KILL THEM WITH FIRE.
  

• How the mighty have fallen. Nerve.com used to be like a really terrific hipster Vanity Fair. They had a perfectly ironic take on the preoccupation with sex. They also offered some pretty excellent short stories and heartfelt, compelling essays.
  
  Now it has seemed to lower the age of its target demographic to the Makeout Club sect and has become merely a gender-neutral Maxim Magazine. Ugh, ick, no thanks. Too bad.
  

• The Enormous Absurdity of Nature.

I promise, more music and less politics on this blog soon... it's just where my head has been.

• Coates (as per usual) gets it.
  
  That Gates-Crowley story is a joke, mostly because there are people serving jail sentences for being black in this country and the media picks-up on this little tiff because the guy is the same social class as the president. I don't think the cop was any more racist than any other cop (which is more often than not "kinda racist") so much as he was just being an asshole cop, which is what a vast number of cops believe their job is. (That one is LAPD!)
  
  Police officers and gangsters do the exact same thing: they use power, resources, and violence to protect their own. The difference is that police have a license and legal cover to do this, and because of that luxury, they can resort to less grisly brutality, and less often. Ultimately, this is a net-positive and a mark of a civilized society, but it isn't pristine.
  
  I'm glad that I can call the cops if someone were to break into my home, but I don't have faith in law enforcement as a noble organization. They're merely effective neighborhood security. They're worth the drawbacks, but it's too easy for a white guy from Indiana to feel that way; they don't think I'm the problem. If I were any other ethnicity you bet your ass I'd feel less safe. If I were Gates, I would have yelled at him too. The cop had no constitutional right to be there, and Obama had it right the first time: it was stupid.

• "Small government conservatives" who howl about taxes and "socialism" seem to have no problem with big government police state trends. Where is the outrage -- OUTRAGE?
  
  If the right wing had any integrity I'd think they would have jumped to Gates' side in a heartbeat. This is a strict constitutional issue! Huh! Must be a race thing.