Your Daily Bamford

Get it while you can, folks.

Andy Mckee - Huge Talent

I get the same feeling of excitement listening to this guy as I did on first hearing Michael Hedges (rest in peace).

Brain-sticky Book-Banning Gallery Site

Martin Konrad's concise, elegant commentary.
"based on concepts 'dirty' and 'book'. series of books as reminder of ongoing censorship and restrictions on intellectual freedom."
(Bonus: some nice furniture designs.)

Kurt is Dead; Long Live Kurt

Kurt Vonnegut died while I was in Amsterdam. Here's the best tribute I found.

15 Things Kurt Vonnegut Said Better Than Anyone Else Ever Has Or Will.
By Scott Gordon, Josh Modell, Noel Murray, Sean O'Neal, Tasha Robinson, Kyle Ryan
AV Club, April 23rd, 2007

1. "I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."

The actual advice here is technically a quote from Kurt Vonnegut's "good uncle" Alex, but Vonnegut was nice enough to pass it on at speeches and in A Man Without A Country. Though he was sometimes derided as too gloomy and cynical, Vonnegut's most resonant messages have always been hopeful in the face of almost-certain doom. And his best advice seems almost ridiculously simple: Give your own happiness a bit of brainspace.

2. "Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God."

In Cat's Cradle, the narrator haplessly stumbles across the cynical, cultish figure Bokonon, who populates his religious writings with moronic, twee aphorisms. The great joke of Bokononism is that it forces meaning on what's essentially chaos, and Bokonon himself admits that his writings are lies. If the protagonist's trip to the island nation of San Lorenzo has any cosmic purpose, it's to catalyze a massive tragedy, but the experience makes him a devout Bokononist. It's a religion for people who believe religions are absurd, and an ideal one for Vonnegut-style humanists.

3. "Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder, 'Why, why, why?' Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand."

More >>

No, David Blaine! Just Stop it, David Blaine! David Blaine!

Guess Who's Ratting Shrub's Base Out Now

I'll give you twenty guesses who said this.

"Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course."

Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I'll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!

You might think I'm getting senile, that I've gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies. Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don't need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions. That's not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I've had enough. How about you?"

Give up? Of course you did.
Hint: He's an old-school conservative, Republican campaign supporter, and his company is a habitual corporate welfare recipient (not to mention a major RNC PAC contributor). Need one more hint? He changed his name to the acronym for "I Am Chairman Of the Chrysler Corporation of America." Which he isn't (anymore).

Fairly compelling stuff. But more importantly, as they say in the newspaper business, from an unimpeachable source. No totally and completely ironic pun intended.

Auto Reply: Out of Office

I'll be out of the country until next week. In the meantime, enjoy Sasha Baron Cohen's acceptance speech at the Golden Globes, which is, to me, a life-changing experience in itself.


If you liked that, you'll like this interview he did after the ceremony. It's hard to tell if this was an extension of his movie, complete with equally ridiculous make benefit cultural journalists. Congratulations, I like, high five.

Be American; Bio American

This is EXACTLY what I'm talking about. Wisconsin has decided to become the oil fields of America. Breadbasket crop fuel is the new Texas tea, baby. Here's Governor Jim Doyle in a speech to the UW-Madison campus today:

"If an oil field in Iran has to compete against a farm field in Wisconsin, that's a very good thing for the environment, for our economy and for the world."

He's creating an Office of Energy Independence. It doesn't get any more Mom and apple pie than this. Finally, a purple state, at least in energy policy (see "Biodiesel Elevator Pitch").

Capitol Times, Madison Wisconsin
by Mike Ivey
April 5, 2007

"...Doyle has already signed Wisconsin on to the list of states with a goal of "25 by 25," or getting 25 percent of electricity and transportation fuels from renewable sources by 2025. Less than 5 percent of state energy currently comes from renewable sources.

File photo Power-generating windmills operated by Alliant Energy rise from the hills of Iowa County in southwest Wisconsin near Montfort.

Doyle has also set of goal of Wisconsin capturing 10 percent of the market share for the production of renewable energy sources by 2030, He said it could create thousands of jobs and bring $13.5 billion annually to the state economy by 2030.

In launching the Office of Energy Independence, Doyle hopes to advance his energy policy and promote the state's bioindustry. The office will serve as a one-stop-shop for citizens, businesses, local units of government and non-governmental organizations pursuing biofuel development or energy efficiency. It will also identify federal funding opportunities and serve as the State Energy Office."

PS the title of today's edition of Texpat is a take on the Hindustani nationalism signs they posted everywhere, designed to deflect western commercial hegemony or some such futility. For instance, when I was in 7th grade the Coca Cola company was asked to leave India . We drank Campa Cola products like Tripp and Rush. That was funnier than most things to us New Delhi school kids. Be Indian, Buy Indian - rush to trip. Hilarity, yar.

Fantastic Quote from an Unlikely Place

Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord was a German field marshal who tried repeatedly to lure Hitler to visit bases under his command, where "a fatal accident will occur," and who referred to the Nazi party as "that gang of criminals." I found the following quote on Chip Morningstar's site. Heroes come from odder and odder places the older I get. At least they come.

"I divide my officers into four classes; the clever, the lazy, the industrious, and the stupid. Each officer possesses at least two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious are fitted for the highest staff appointments. Use can be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy however is for the very highest command; he has the temperament and nerves to deal with all situations. But whoever is stupid and industrious is a menace and must be removed immediately."

Alanis Kicks it Ole Skool

AHHH! Oges sent me a YouTube link to Alanis Morissette's take on Fergie's "Lady Lumps." I died.

Who knew she had it in her? You can't tell me this isn't the funniest move on YouTube:

You're gonna lobe it, I can't explain.


OK, also, this reminds me of Ed Byrne's take on "Ironic:"

"There's nothing ironic about being stuck in a traffic jam when you're late for something. Unless you're a town planner. If you were a town planner and you were on your way to a seminar of town planners at which you were giving a talk on how you solved the problem of traffic congestion in your area, couldn't get to it because you were stuck in a traffic jam, that'd be well ironic."

"Rain on your wedding day is ironic only if marrying a weatherman and he set the date."

"A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break, that's inconsiderate office management. A no-smoking sign in a cigarette factory - irony."

Or Mo Rocca:

"Irony is the disparity between what you expect will happen and what does happen. So raining on your wedding day isn't ironic; it's just crappy. It would have been ironic if she had lived in a place like Seattle and traveled to the desert of Mexico for a wedding, and it ended up raining there, but not in Seattle. Alanis always gets the last laugh though. We all sit here, saying her song isn't ironic, but in fact, that's pretty ironic that she wrote a song called 'Ironic' that wasn't really ironic. Those Canadians are pretty crafty."

Om Me Mine Om Me Mine Om Me Mine

Just finished an awesome article on, as Ron Rosenbaum puts it, the "shameless enlistment of yoga and elevated Eastern yogic philosophy for shamelessly material Western goals." From the March 21 issue of Slate. Writing for the New Texas Magazine, I could never put my finger on it as incisively as he does, dissecting a particularly creepy article author:

"...The final step in the great journey of self-understanding the Yoga Journal editors have force-marched her on is realizing it's all about her "relationship with herself." Whitney Houston yoga: I found the greatest love of all—Me! It's the return of New Age Me-generation narcissism. And there's nothing worse than narcissism posing as humility.

"Hey, if Buddhism and other Eastern traditions are about compassion, why not skip the scented bath, skip making amends with the self, skip realization of "the opportunity to embrace aparigraha or non-grasping." Instead, go down to the local soup kitchen or homeless shelter and help some people who don't have the resources to send flowers to themselves, people who actually need help. Rather than continuing the endless processes of anointing yourself with overly scented candlelit self-love."

Lirpa Loof

CNET News
April 1, 2007

U.N. panel downplays warming of blogosphere
Scientists say layer of hot air is confined to Silicon Valley's Sand Hill Road for now. But if the tech bubble bursts, they warn, "it is likely to engulf all of San Francisco."

Police Blotter: Complaint over free software, not free beer
Irked members of Delta Zeta sorority file grievance with university officials after Linux user group serves no booze at weekly social. Sorority president says "all that talk of free beer" was misleading.

U.S. government outlaws Windows Vista
President Bush signs measure decreeing that Microsoft's operating system is so complex it poses a national security threat. "There's all these new colors and the startup sound is completely different," says one worried U.S. senator.