underneath the waves

loss

2011-03-07T03:08:00.002-05:00

i already know what's going to happen. what's weird is i am the only one that can predict what happens next.

2011-02-20T22:02:00.000-05:00

2011-01-24T04:48:00.001-05:00

I'm making mixes on 8 Track now.

2010-12-08T17:39:00.009-05:00

Check out what I have been doing...http://8tracks.com/camden2622

Top 10 Albums of 2010

2010-12-08T16:40:00.003-05:00

Once again, it was difficult to find 10. Here they are:

Surfer Blood - Astro Coast

Frightened Rabbit - The Winter of Mixed Drinks

The National - High Violet

Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

Interpol - Interpol

Girl Talk - All Day

Bruce Springsteen - The Promise

Active Child - Curtis Lane

Band of Horses - Infinite Arms

Shout Out Louds - Work

RIP 10.19.10

2010-10-20T22:25:00.003-05:00

an acquaintance of mine killed himself the other day. looking on his facebook page, i saw he wrote this:

The man listened to the water from a dock. He sat alone. He listened closely. The small slaps of wave against the dock supports beat in rhythm with his heart. He heard them both equally as loudly.
His eyes were closed, as were his fists, tightly, but not so much so that he’d even noticed. His mind was at work, but his body at rest, tensely.
How odd, he thought, that everything had come down to this one moment. He played it out in his mind as his legs dangled over the edge. He thought of it, the sadness pulling his from the inside out, making him tremble, but slightly enough that, again, he wasn’t sure if any of it was truly real.
A fly grazed his ear and spoke softly about the past. He could hear it, every word, but it made no difference now. There would be time to consider all that, or maybe there wouldn’t. It really made no difference. The past is a fond thing to recall, but it doesn’t help, doesn’t change anything. Some times it only makes things worse. Remembering the songs of the birds, the smell of the orchards, the feel of the breeze, none of it could help. It was just a reminder of what’s been lost, as much as a reminder of what had been gained. In the end, when the decision falls, you’re either swimming or sinking, and he’d known that for a very long time. In fact, he couldn’t really remember how he’d felt before he knew that.
A fish broke the surface and ate the fly, all at once. The sudden change in tempo of the waves broke the man’s thoughts for a moment and he began to cry.

A woman walked along the shore and noticed him. She paused a moment and watched him. She could tell he was troubled, and she watched with some interest. She did not know the man, but felt a desire to walk over and see if he was alright. She felt an instinct to comfort him. Maternal. She stepped ahead one step, but then her cellular phone buzzed in her pocket. She reached for it and answered.
“Hello Jim. Oh, nothing, just walking by the lake. Sure. Of course I can. Yes, I’ll be there in about 10 minutes. Great! You did!? Well, great!”
She turned back up the path and headed for her cabin in the wooded hill. She was happy. A good night was ahead for her. Her mind raced. She liked Jim and Jim liked her. This might be her night, she thought. Maybe. Finally.
Just as she was about to pass into the trees she looked back to see the man on the dock. She looked for a moment but he was gone. “Huh,” she said aloud as she disappeared into the trees. “Huh.”

very sad. all his friends turned their back on him and i believe this is what he was describing.

2010-10-05T00:26:00.002-05:00

marketing makes me ill.

2010-09-08T01:12:00.002-05:00

Louboutins

2010-09-01T15:43:00.002-05:00

2010-08-14T17:34:00.000-05:00

sailing

2010-08-07T00:52:00.000-05:00

this is incredibly profound...

2010-07-11T17:15:00.000-05:00

my new favorite band

2010-06-08T19:26:00.001-05:00

Active Child - "She was a Vision" by indiemusicfilter

guess i just haven't been inspired much lately...

2010-03-23T04:46:00.002-05:00

2010-01-29T21:05:00.001-05:00

2010-01-13T11:48:00.001-05:00

i want this shoe.

2010-01-12T00:23:00.002-05:00

'i felt before i thought'

2010-01-03T18:46:00.004-05:00

and man did it cost me...

looking forward. happy new year.

2010-01-02T03:55:00.003-05:00

2009-12-31T18:55:00.002-05:00

i went home for the holidays, as everyone does. this time was different though. Everyone my age or younger finds it perfectly acceptable to ignore present company and play games or text people on their phone. wtf?

how insulting is it to see someone texting while you are watching a movie or eating a meal or even telling them something?

maybe i am just old-school.

Top 10 of 2009

2009-12-12T21:39:00.002-05:00

Normally, I complile a list of my top 10 records of the year. However, this is the first year I couldn't come up with 10, in fact, I couldn't come up with more than 2.

It really depressed me- a friend and I were talking about and I sat down and thought I just forgot about a bunch. I just went over the list of releases for the whole year
and got 2 picks and one of them was a stretch. wow.

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.

2009-12-08T20:57:00.002-05:00

2009-11-12T14:50:00.000-05:00

2009-10-26T05:50:00.000-05:00

oddly beautiful.

2009-10-12T16:23:00.000-05:00

this song breaks my heart.

2009-10-09T02:04:00.000-05:00

the U! this is outside the stadium before we won the game, what a night.

2009-10-05T19:43:00.002-05:00

cool video.

2009-10-02T07:42:00.001-05:00

what a great picture.

2009-10-01T17:25:00.000-05:00

this is amazing. what a great song.

2009-09-23T10:31:00.001-05:00

so far, so good.

2009-09-18T00:04:00.002-05:00

2009-09-06T00:47:00.003-05:00

I
Have
Learned
So much from God
That I can no longer
Call
Myself A Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim
A Buddhist, a Jew.

The Truth has shared so much of Itself
With me
That I can no longer call myself
A man, a woman, and angel
Or even pure
Soul.

Love has
Befriended Hafiz so completely
It has turned to ash
And freed
Me

Of every concept and image
My mind has ever known.

Per aspera ad astra.

2009-08-31T01:31:00.001-05:00

these are my twisted words.

2009-08-17T22:08:00.004-05:00

new radiohead song

my dream girl. here she is, natural

2009-08-17T05:37:00.002-05:00

back from Puerto Rico.

2009-08-15T01:45:00.002-05:00

red and black

2009-08-06T20:25:00.002-05:00

only a few more left.

2009-08-01T02:56:00.002-05:00

another destination...

2009-07-28T18:27:00.003-05:00

La Mina Falls, El Yunque

above the waves is nice, too

2009-07-26T00:16:00.002-05:00

this will be me in 3 weeks (can't wait!)

2009-07-25T05:15:00.003-05:00

Bio Bay, Vieques Island

2009-07-24T14:27:00.001-05:00

cat power. show. fort lauderdale.

2009-07-14T00:07:00.002-05:00

did i mention how much i love David Lynch?

2009-07-12T16:03:00.001-05:00

♥♥♥

2009-07-02T09:35:00.002-05:00

R.I.P.

2009-06-25T23:54:00.003-05:00

i know everyone is talking about this. i would just like to say i met him once about 5 years ago and found him to be very nice and quite normal-looking, to my surprise. what i DIDN'T expect was how crazy the crowd was following him, and i can't imagine a life like that. i will always remember trying to emulate the dance moves in the video 'Thriller'.

random memory.

2009-06-24T00:24:00.002-05:00

we played 'wargames' as kids. we hid out in the woods and dared others to find us. one night, one of our fathers, who was a policeman, said no one could hide from him. i was determined to prove him wrong. the game started and i chose a completely open spot but covered myself with a few branches and laid as still as possible. i barely breathed. the policeman looked and looked, and never found me. after they finally got me out of hiding every kid realized-...

personal pet peeve-

2009-06-16T02:54:00.002-05:00

celebrity names/couples being shortened, a la 'J.lo', 'Speidi', 'Brangelina', how fucking lame.

always loved Turlington.

2009-06-11T21:04:00.002-05:00

Taliban and the Arab culture

2009-06-07T02:19:00.002-05:00

I am so sick of these ignorant people - so caught up in their religious idiocy that they feel the need to project violence on people who don't think the same. How does killing other people further your cause? It reminds me of Pro-Life people bombing abortion clinics. Ironic in a classical sense.

a heart that hurts is a heart that works.

2009-05-31T14:21:00.002-05:00

i want to see this.

2009-05-25T21:27:00.001-05:00

Sasha Grey

2009-05-10T12:29:00.002-05:00

this is so awesome.

2009-05-01T15:23:00.002-05:00

I was on something like this in Las Vegas at the Palms hotel (Ghost Bar). But THIS- this at the tallest building in the US, the Sears Tower. I can't wait to do this.

emancipation from

2009-04-29T02:19:00.000-05:00

I heart the Aveda Institute.

2009-04-18T16:09:00.002-05:00

women are soo dramatic. it's irritating.

2009-04-04T11:18:00.002-05:00

earth hour, tomorrow night, 8:30pm. do your part.

2009-03-27T17:50:00.002-05:00

Click here for more information

see you on saturday...

2009-03-26T19:47:00.001-05:00

let the right one in.

2009-03-22T03:53:00.003-05:00

stoya. love this picture.

2009-03-14T20:35:00.004-05:00

when love and death embrace.

2009-03-07T21:50:00.004-05:00

heartagram

some of them want to use you...

2009-03-04T01:03:00.002-05:00

blood bleeds.

2009-03-01T20:49:00.000-05:00

a music diatribe.

2009-03-01T17:23:00.002-05:00

Welcome address to freshman class at Boston Conservatory given by Karl Paulnack

One of my parents’ deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not properly value me as a musician, that I wouldn’t be appreciated. I had very good grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might be more appreciated than I would be as a musician. I still remember my mother’s remark when I announced my decision to apply to music school—she said, “you’re WASTING your SAT scores.” On some level, I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the value of music was, what its purpose was. And they LOVED music, they listened to classical music all the time. They just weren’t really clear about its function. So let me talk about that a little bit, because we live in a society that puts music in the “arts and entertainment” section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment, in fact it’s the opposite of entertainment. Let me talk a little bit about music, and how it works.

The first people to understand how music really works were the ancient Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you; the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us. Let me give you some examples of how this works.

One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the Quartet for the End of Time written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1940. Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the war against Nazi Germany. He was captured by the Germans in June of 1940, sent across Germany in a cattle car and imprisoned in a concentration camp.

He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him paper and a place to compose. There were three other musicians in the camp, a cellist, a violinist, and a clarinetist, and Messiaen wrote his quartet with these specific players in mind. It was performed in January 1941 for four thousand prisoners and guards in the prison camp. Today it is one of the most famous masterworks in the repertoire.

Given what we have since learned about life in the concentration camps, why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or playing music? There was barely enough energy on a good day to find food and water, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture—why would anyone bother with music? And yet—from the camps, we have poetry, we have music, we have visual art; it wasn’t just this one fanatic Messiaen; many, many people created art. Why? Well, in a place where people are only focused on survival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must be, somehow, essential for life. The camps were without money, without hope, without commerce, without recreation, without basic respect, but they were not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, “I am alive, and my life has meaning.”

On September 12, 2001 I was a resident of Manhattan. That morning I reached a new understanding of my art and its relationship to the world. I sat down at the piano that morning at 10 AM to practice as was my daily routine; I did it by force of habit, without thinking about it. I lifted the cover on the keyboard, and opened my music, and put my hands on the keys and took my hands off the keys. And I sat there and thought, does this even matter? Isn’t this completely irrelevant? Playing the piano right now, given what happened in this city yesterday, seems silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless. Why am I here? What place has a musician in this moment in time? Who needs a piano player right now? I was completely lost.

And then I, along with the rest of New York, went through the journey of getting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, and in fact I contemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play the piano again. And then I observed how we got through the day. At least in my neighborhood, we didn’t shoot hoops or play Scrabble. We didn’t play cards to pass the time, we didn’t watch TV, we didn’t shop, we most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organized activity that I saw in New York, that same day, was singing. People sang. People sang around fire houses, people sang “We Shall Overcome”. Lots of people sang America the Beautiful. The first organized public event that I remember was the Brahms Requiem, later that week, at Lincoln Center, with the New York Philharmonic. The first organized public expression of grief, our first communal response to that historic event, was a concert. That was the beginning of a sense that life might go on. The US Military secured the airspace, but recovery was led by the arts, and by music in particular, that very night.

From these two experiences, I have come to understand that music is not part of “arts and entertainment” as the newspaper section would have us believe. It’s not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass time. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can’t with our minds.
Some of you may know Samuel Barber’s heart-wrenchingly beautiful piece Adagio for Strings. If you don’t know it by that name, then some of you may know it as the background music which accompanied the Oliver Stone movie Platoon, a film about the Vietnam War. If you know that piece of music either way, you know it has the ability to crack your heart open like a walnut; it can make you cry over sadness you didn’t know you had. Music can slip beneath our conscious reality to get at what’s really going on inside us the way a good therapist does.

I bet that you have never been to a wedding where there was absolutely no music. There might have been only a little music, there might have been some really bad music, but I bet you there was some music. And something very predictable happens at weddings—people get all pent up with all kinds of emotions, and then there’s some musical moment where the action of the wedding stops and someone sings or plays the flute or something. And even if the music is lame, even if the quality isn’t good, predictably 30 or 40 percent of the people who are going to cry at a wedding cry a couple of moments after the music starts. Why? The Greeks. Music allows us to move around those big invisible pieces of ourselves and rearrange our insides so that we can express what we feel even when we can’t talk about it. Can you imagine watching Indiana Jones or Superman or Star Wars with the dialogue but no music? What is it about the music swelling up at just the right moment in ET so that all the softies in the audience start crying at exactly the same moment? I guarantee you if you showed the movie with the music stripped out, it wouldn’t happen that way. The Greeks: Music is the understanding of the relationship bet ween invisible internal objects.

I’ll give you one more example, the story of the most important concert of my life. I must tell you I have played a little less than a thousand concerts in my life so far. I have played in places that I thought were important. I like playing in Carnegie Hall; I enjoyed playing in Paris; it made me very happy to please the critics in St. Petersburg. I have played for people I thought were important; music critics of major newspapers, foreign heads of state. The most important concert of my entire life took place in a nursing home in Fargo, ND, about 4 years ago.

I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We began, as we often do, with Aaron Copland’s Sonata, which was written during Worl d War II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland’s, a young pilot who was shot down during the war. Now we often talk to our audiences about the pieces we are going to play rather than providing them with written program notes. But in this case, because we began the concert with this piece, we decided to talk about the piece later in the program and to just come out and play the music without explanation.

Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near the front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later met, was clearly a soldier—even in his 70’s, it was clear from his buzz-cut hair, square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a good deal of his life in the military. I thought it a little bit odd that someone would be moved to tears by that particular movement of that particular piece, but it wasn’t the first time I’ve heard crying in a concert and we went on with the concert and finished the piece.

When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided to talk about both the first and second pieces, and we described the circumstances in which the Copland was written and mentioned its dedication to a downed pilot. The man in t he front of the audience became so disturbed that he had to leave the auditorium. I honestly figured that we would not see him again, but he did come backstage afterwards, tears and all, to explain himself.

What he told us was this: “During World War II, I was a pilot, and I was in an aerial combat situation where one of my team’s planes was hit. I watched my friend bail out, and watched his parachute open, but the Japanese planes which had engaged us returned and machine gunned across the parachute chords so as to separate the parachute from the pilot, and I watched my friend drop away into the ocean, realizing that he was lost. I have not thought about this for many years, but during that first piece of music you played, this memory returned to me so vividly that it was as though I was reliving it. I didn’t understand why this was happening, why now, but then when you came out to explain that this piece of music was written to commemorate a lost pilot, it was a little more than I could handle. How does the music do that? How did it find those feelings and those memories in me?”

Remember the Greeks: music is the study of invisible relationships between internal objects. This concert in Fargo was the most important work I have ever done. For me to play for this old soldier and help him connect, somehow, with Aaron Copland, and to connect their memories of their lost friends, to help him remember and mourn his friend, this is my work. This is why music matters.

What follows is part of the talk I will give to this year’s freshman class when I welcome them a few days from now. The responsibility I will charge your sons and daughters with is this:

“If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicing appendectomies, you’d take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some night at two AM someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and you’re going to have to save their life. Well, my friends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft.

You’re not here to become an entertainer, and you don’t have to sell yourself. The truth is you don’t have anything to sell; being a musician isn’t about dispensing a product, like selling used Chevys. I’m not an entertainer; I’m a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue worker. You’re here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can come into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well.

Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don’t expect it will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that’s what we do. As in the concentration camp and the evening of 9/11, the artists are the ones who might be able to help us with our internal, invisible lives.

light at the end of the tunnel.

2009-02-22T15:21:00.001-05:00

Van Helsing's Kit

2009-02-21T19:52:00.001-05:00

i love this song

2009-02-12T21:31:00.003-05:00

School of Seven Bells- Half Asleep

i will see this before i die.

2009-01-26T20:05:00.002-05:00

this is a must-watch for those who read my blog.

2009-01-25T18:42:00.005-05:00

let the right one in.

spoken well

2009-01-17T19:02:00.003-05:00

By TED ANTHONY

NEW YORK (AP) - George Washington, first president, said this: "It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world."

Eldridge Cleaver, civil rights leader, said this: "Americans think of themselves collectively as a huge rescue squad on 24-hour call."

Toby Keith, populist country singer, said this: "This big dog will fight when you rattle his cage - and you'll be sorry that you messed with the U.S. of A."

Now: Place those three divergent sentiments in a large bowl. Whip vigorously until blended. There you'll have, in one curious, often contradictory recipe, the world-changing, world-shaking world view of the quixotic species known as the American people.

When 21st-century Americans contemplate their place on the planet, they confront a complex history of isolationism and engagement, a deep instinct to live and let live that coexists with an equally fervent desire to be a robust beacon of freedom - sometimes by any means necessary.

That means that, while a presidential transition offers many limbos, none is quite so stark as the expected change in the approach, method and technique of foreign policy that will come with the inauguration of Barack Obama on Tuesday.

"It's a very plastic moment," says Eric Rauchway, author of "Blessed Among Nations: How the World Made America."

The arrival of Obama and his secretary of state designate, Hillary Rodham Clinton, represents a baton-passing between two distinct versions of the American world view - George W. Bush's interventionist, we-know-best foreign policy and Obama's vow to "restore our moral standing."

Both of those outlooks have their merits and their supporters. In the era after 9/11, particularly, Americans' hunger for security in the "homeland" is fervent - enough so that we re-elected Bush in 2004 more than a year after he ordered the invasion of Iraq on a false premise.

Nevertheless, polls show an increasing dissatisfaction with how America plays with others in the international sandbox, and the neoconservatives who pushed a more aggressive American position toward the world - men such as Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton and Paul Wolfowitz - left the Bush administration years ago.

But when a new president gazes out upon the republic and looks for clues to consider the American mood toward the world and craft policy accordingly, sometimes it's all quite difficult to figure out.

We are a welcoming people who have embraced waves of immigrants who have changed us - and keep changing us - in productive ways. Yet ours is a suspicious land where accusations of Frenchness helped sour voters against John Kerry and, days after 9/11, anti-Muslim sentiment claimed the life of an Indian Sikh - the cultural equivalent of mistaking a pine tree for a chrysanthemum bush.

This is a country where ordering Chinese takeout has become a fundamentally American activity, yet also where legions of non-passport-holders who devour the mediated experiences of "Morocco" and "Japan" at Walt Disney World's Epcot Center would never dream of visiting the real thing.

And this is a nation where festivals celebrating faraway cultures are held in the smallest, least diverse of communities - but where an average senior citizen in Frederick, Md., will issue whispered warnings about black helicopters and the one-world government that's surely going to usurp our sovereignty.

"We need others and others need us. And we don't like that," says Schuyler Foerster, president of the World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh, one of many such groups that work with their regions to facilitate American engagement with the world.

Jack Holmes, a political scientist at Hope College in Holland, Mich., studies long-term foreign policy trends. He says American attitudes typically pinball every couple of decades between two phases, "introvert" and "extrovert," and are approaching the end of an extrovert phase.

He doesn't expect an introverted Obama administration but thinks the public is ready for changes in strategy, tactics and tone.

"Americans are never quite happy with what their role is in the world. Either they want to show the world how to do it, or sit back and set an example that the world can follow," Holmes says. But with a sharp change in policy and attitude potentially at hand, he says, "The American public is at a very important moment when it comes to how this country sees itself."

Evidence is everywhere, and has been for many generations, that this country sees itself as a "shining city upon a hill," as one of its earliest leaders, John Winthrop, put it - a metaphor that Ronald Reagan reintroduced effectively in the 1980s.

"Inspiration is our export," says Ted Widmer, author of "Ark of the Liberties: America and the World."

That tendency to be a model for humanity created a magnificent society built on ideas and ideals - and also got a lot of people killed.

It is the instinct that makes Americans the most philanthropic people in the world. It also makes them a wellspring of resentment by nations that bristle at what they call U.S. arrogance - something that perplexes many good Americans who say they are only trying to help.

"I think we do underestimate the degree that our actions are considered by people of other countries," Widmer says.

In fact, when foreigners actually visit America they seem to come away charmed. U.S. Travel, the leading industry group for the travel sector, surveyed more than 2,000 foreign nationals and found those who had visited the United States were 74 percent more likely to have a favorable opinion about Americans than those who had not.

"When the American people are being themselves, it is proven to work," says Geoff Freeman, U.S. Travel's senior vice president for public affairs.

"There's been a healthy debate in this country as to, 'Does it matter what the world thinks of us?'" he says. "And I think that the past eight years have turned much of that debate toward, 'Yes, it does matter.'"

It matters because, like it or not, the domino effect isn't just about communism anymore. Markets fail in Asia, and Americans convulse. Jobs shed in Dubuque show up in Dubai. And, most dramatically, foreign-policy decisions executed in far-off lands can have direct security effects at home.

At the same time, engaging Americans in the nuances of foreign affairs has often proven difficult. Not only does geography keep most things far away in concept if not in fact, but many of the 21st century's diffuse global realities are difficult to wrangle because they lack visual, Hollywood-style iconography.
Instead of dust bowls and bread lines, we have intricate financial networks that connect us with the world but are impossible for all but experts to visualize. Instead of menacing footage of Nazi rallies or Nikita Khrushchev banging his shoe, we have an undefined enemy who roams the globe surreptitiously and hides in plain sight. And instead of the movie ending with a climax - an Iraq invasion, say - the aftermath trickles on and the mission is not, in fact, yet accomplished.

For eight years of Bush foreign policy, the Democrats have insisted, quite vociferously, that they understand America's place in the world better than their rivals. On Tuesday, they get to show us if they're right.

"We must use what has been called 'smart power,'" Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at her confirmation hearing last week. That, she said, means deploying "the full range of tools at our disposal - diplomatic, economic, military, political, legal, and cultural - picking the right tool or combination of tools for each situation."

Is that the wariness of permanent alliances? The huge rescue squad? The big dog unleashed? From isolationism to Manifest Destiny, from emergence as a major power to post-World War II consensus to neoconservative activism, American history is replete with all three options.

And the American people of the 21st century, part of a connected world for better and worse, face the same challenge their leaders do: understanding that, when it comes to reaching a hand into the complex toolbox of world affairs, you'd better know how to use the implement you grab.

goodbye 2008. happy new year everyone.

2008-12-31T19:38:00.001-05:00

Top 10 releases of the year 2008

2008-12-07T15:29:00.003-05:00

this is my annual list. i was a little hasty this year so feel free to suggest anything i might have overlooked. cheers!

what made milwaukee famous- what doesnt kill us

sun kil moon- april

m83- saturday=youth

quiet village- silent movie

ladytron- velocifero

fujiya & miyagi- lightbulbs

school of seven bells- alpinism

mates of state- re-arrange us

jack penate- matinee

wintersleep- welcome to the night sky

2008-12-07T04:06:00.001-05:00

"thats what I wanted since always"

From sad story of the year...to 'Bag of the year

2008-11-24T19:15:00.005-05:00

Following his August 20th plane crash that killed four others and left Travis Barker and DJ AM with third degree burns, Barker is suing Bombardier Inc (the planes manufacturer), Clay Lacy Aviation and Global Exec Aviation (the charter companies), and Goodyear Tire and Rubber (who made the tires), to seek compensation for his "pain and suffering, mental anguish, psychological and emotional distress and disfigurement and pre-impact fear of death and burning". E! says...

Ok, when I heard what happened to this guy I felt truly bad for him. He lost some friends, other people lost their lives, but hey! he miraculously survived.

Then I hear some people are throwing a benefit concert for him and DJ AM benefitting THEMSELVES, not the victim's families. Wait a second- aren't these guys wealthy already? Ok, I thought. Maybe it's the organizers trying to get promotion for their bands and not these guys' fault at all. Benefit of the doubt, right?

Now this mother fucker has the GALL to sue???? And for whose gain? Himself. Congratulations douchebag. And to think I actually felt sorry for you.

I guess being alive and successful aren't enough for some people.

keep rolling, U!

2008-11-14T09:03:00.003-05:00

2008-11-10T20:12:00.002-05:00

2008-11-05T01:31:00.003-05:00

this makes me feel proud, we finally got what we have been wanting for years.

bye bye birdie

2008-10-29T07:21:00.004-05:00

sadly, i hardly ever use this anymore.
with RS-ZS-MU-SB and many others out there, it's no longer necessary.
i use it once in a while, for old time's sake.
it's been an incredible run, birdie.

this is inspiring.

2008-10-23T21:38:00.001-05:00

my favorite time of the year...

2008-10-18T01:42:00.001-05:00

relationships

2008-10-11T13:54:00.002-05:00

i will admit my choices and/or persuasions haven't been that good for me. at one point i followed one blindly with heart; another i was persuaded by the blind one to follow with heart.
c'est la vie.

light shines brightest in the dark.

2008-10-11T13:03:00.000-05:00

ayo technology part 2

2008-10-09T07:58:00.000-05:00

technology.

2008-09-21T10:51:00.003-05:00

my home phone (yeah i still have one), my ipod and my cell. ridiculous, yet somehow necessary, all plugged in to my comp.

the '85 bears were the best

2008-09-21T10:13:00.001-05:00

i feel a little nostalgic. i don't think any team could be that dominant now.

finally...

2008-09-20T13:08:00.001-05:00

an answer to those smug Mac ads...

r.a.o.

2008-09-19T10:24:00.003-05:00

I am glad for you. Hope it works out.

Just do me a favor and don’t vilify me anymore. You really were cruel to me a lot and if I fought back it was only to ‘recover’ MY self-esteem. I was never the person to insult you, I took years of abuse from you until I actually struck back. I am ok now, just please don’t create this thing in your mind that absolves you and makes me the demon.

I love you, despite all the bullshit we have put each other through (and yes in the last 6 months or so I am guilty of most of it).

addendum: last year AFTER i got sick, you were very kind to me and i appreciate that. you know exactly the times i am speaking about above, however.

2008-09-16T21:01:00.001-05:00

"Whatever it is you think you are you aren't:
A good friend, unique, well read, good looking, or smart.
Well, now you know.

Well I hate to be the one to bare such bad news,
I know it hurts to hear but it's true;
You don't mean anything to anyone but me.
And even I think that you're blinded by conceit
So now you know,
The free beer and basement shows don't mean what they did.
It's what you do, not who you were,
What you wear, where you've been.
So do something.

Whoever you think is watching you dance from across the room they aren't.
If anything they feel sorry for you because you try so hard.
I know it hurts to hear but it's the truth.
So you might as well hear it from a friend.
You're a has-been that never was.
And I know it's mean to say
But it's something I've been meaning to say for awhile.
You're a has-been that never was or will be."
--Owen

this guy said it all for me. (music industry friends take note)

2008-09-12T22:07:00.001-05:00

bad.

2008-09-12T00:26:00.002-05:00

2008-09-11T08:47:00.005-05:00

i normally stay way from politics on my page, but this is too important.

GO HERE TO MAKE SURE YOU VOTE

2008-09-09T22:17:00.001-05:00

rollin' on chrome

2008-09-03T19:36:00.004-05:00

Just downloaded Google Chrome, and so far i am loving it. very minimal, much faster, and with the kind of open source firefox has.

also, with Rapidshare and ZShare, i hardly ever even need to use p2ps or torrents anymore. ah, progress. finally.

2008-08-30T08:58:00.001-05:00

lamborghini reventon

2008-08-27T18:39:00.003-05:00

I officially withdraw my earlier statement that the Maybach Exelero is the most incredible car I have ever seen.

cool idea- glass keyboard

2008-08-24T14:42:00.002-05:00

redemption.

2008-08-24T13:51:00.001-05:00

beautiful and depraved

2008-08-21T06:54:00.001-05:00

i know someone who would like these...

2008-08-14T22:01:00.001-05:00