rock over London. rock on, Chicago.

more songs. 

“undone” by Pearl Jam. Phil gave me a ride to class one day, as I was gonna be late. Phil drove a black Mustang, the inside of which was littered with CDs and empty packs of Marlboro reds. it was spring, and Phil really, really likes Pearl Jam, and he had this song on at full blast. which is interesting, because it’s not a song I would really turn the volume up to. 

“yellow ledbetter,” Pearl Jam. again. everybody likes this song, and I had it on when I drove through Monument Valley, on the way to see Mean Mike Smith in Las Vegas. Monument Valley is the jam, might I add.

someone else’s photo. but so you get the idea.

other songs I listened to on the way there: “good old-fashioned lover boy” by Queen and “psycho killer” by Talking Heads.
that was a wild day, if I remember correctly. very long. I wrote everything out in longhand wherever I stopped. so that I wouldn’t forget the details, things you don’t remember years later. I had forgotten about the Germans. and Harry Belafonte.

ding dong, insufferable asshole Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign is dead.

“little bastard,” Ass Ponys. I had this on a mix tape when I was like 12 or 13, and it came on in the car with my dad once. “jesus christ, what kind of garbage are you listening to?”

from now on, though, I’ll think of Mitt Romney’s failed bid.

9:54. alright, that’s three hours. I’m going to take what’s left of my self esteem and stop this.

9:51. good god, Hume is fucking huge. he’s talking to jackass pundit-extraordinaire, Sean Hannity, and he’s just towering over him. he looks like Lurch from The Addams Family.

9:43. and now Olbermann is interviewing Howard Dean. of course he is.

on Fox News, Britt Hume is holding court with … I think that’s Bill Kristol. they’re talking about the Republican field. which sounds about right. the whole television set looks like a giant acquarium.

9:26. I think of Chris Kattan’s impersonation of Paul Begala whenever I see Paul Begala. god, it’s funny.

I could really stand some Ice Hockey for the Nintendo right now. but I loaned it to Dudd in college, and he never gave it back. now, he’s a noncom in the Navy after dropping out of school. he’s also married, and stepfather to a teenager. jesus. he can have the fucking game. 

also, Obama gets Alabama, Clinton’s got Missouri, and McCain gets New York. I think Clinton gets Missouri.

9:05. ABC News is calling its coverage program Showdown: Coast to Coast.
see, I keep throwing out these observations and not trying to follow them up with punchlines. Showdown: Coast to Coast is laughable enough.

Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopolous and a bunch of folks I can’t identify on sight are talking about Clinton. Stephanopolous is like a Greek leprechaun. or a satyr. it’s hard to take anything he says seriously.

also, my chili is delicious!

8:47. just for kicks, lets see what Nancy Grace is talking about on Headline News.

the graphic on the screen reads Day 8: executive businessman vanishes! she’s interviewing a bunch of rednecks about a missing person case in Little Rock. “does he have any kids?” Nancy asks. 

Nancy just had twins. those children will grow up, and they’ll be evil, vicious little bastards, and someday will enslave the world.

8:43. Joe Scarborough is the corniest asshole on television. Scarborough is like the leader of MSNBC’s junior varsity squad. it’s always him, Pat ”the neverending box of shit” Buchanan and the most obvious lesbian in the history of cable news. oh, and Eugene Robinson from the Post. The conversation, that goes on between those four when the cameras are off, must be unbearable.

8:36. hey, it’s Lester Holt. holla back, CBS2 Chicago! 

8:22. Chris Matthews suggests a McCain/Huckabee ticket to Sen. Mel Martinez form Fla. god fucking damn it. I mean, god damn it. that can’t be allowed to happen. 

also, Matthews suggests Huckabee is McCain’s Jesus, cause he’s sacrificing himself against Romney. Huckabee as Jesus, says Chris Matthews.

8:17. Fox News has Karl Rove as a political commentator. no, really. 

8:05. McCain gets Connecticut and Illinois. Obama gets Illinois, obviously. Romney gets Mass. OK. Huck gets Georgia. so says MSNBC, so  say we all. 

7:39. Chris Matthews is interviewing Bobby Rush. Rush beat Obama a few years back in a Democratic primary for Rush’s seat in Congress, but now Rush is endorsing him. Matthews is pressing that tack for all it’s worth.

7:16. I’m making chili. grandma gave me directions over the phone. it’s nice; it serves a nicer purpose to call home for besides some forced conversation. also, Keith Olbermann. Olberrman? really irritates me.  

7:00. if you actually listen to Wolf Blitzer talk – meaning, if you placed his pattern of speech in a regular conversation, it’s like a guy who has a curse that keeps  him from ever finishing a sentence. when he’s on screen, he never, stops, talking. you’re right, Mike. 

also, CNN calls Georgia primary for Obama.

6:41 pm. I’m going to try and do this live. meaning, continuously update this over the evening while I watch political coverage. so, we’ll see how that goes.

I’ve got the News Hour on. Shields and Brooks, who are normally dry as fucking toast, are being interviewed by Jim Lehrer. who I am convinced, with my heart and soul, is a robot. he has huge black pupils and the steadiest voice I’ve ever heard. it freaks me out, bad.

but the columnists are talking about two things: why the rest of the GOP field doesn’t like Romney, and why the far right is all over McCain. the general consensus on the McCain hating is that they hate him because he isn’t a, quoting Brooks, “a true believer.” he disagrees with the liberals, he doesn’t loathe them. McCain will compromise, he isn’t a zealot.
and that’s exactly why I hate Romney. you know he doesn’t believe the shit he’s saying, but he’s purposely appealing to the zealots. Limbaughs, Coulters, etc. Romney just wants to be out front, he could care less what cause he’s fronting.

Chad’s getting pretty bad.

I’ve been reading the AP stories coming out about this, and there’s never any photos. there’s never any photos of this war zone, or if there are, I haven’t seen them. and that’s scary about this conflict. just a couple of images of burned-out cars, French military standing around a secured hotel. those are the scary kinds of conflicts, the unsanitized ones, that don’t allow photographers. or don’t stand them. ones that are described as such:

The fighting in N’Djamena was believed to have taken a heavy toll. Bodies lay on the streets and the hulks of burned out tanks and other vehicles stood abandoned.

“was believed.” because it’s so buckwild over there they can’t get cameras in.
the Pakistani frontier, I feel, is a lot like this. and Afghanistan. this article is kick ass, my brother turned me on to it. there’s a photographer embedded with a platoon in that one, but it’s the wars that don’t have combatants who will tolerate journalists that picque my interest. it’s fucking morbid, man. I can’t help it. spasmic violence in spheres outside of American influence, that the American public doesn’t care about. Chechnya, the Sudan conflict, stuff like that.

alright, for example: there’s never any pictures of the Janjaweed. just ten seconds of harried video of a blurry figure, camel-borne, with a carbine, shot through a hut window in a burnt-out village. it’s like a real-live monster movie.
and that figure, you can’t go ask it questions, find out what he’s about. there’s no clear explanation to what he’s doing; it’s fucking crazy, and it’s murdering and dismembering and raping as it goes.
and this exists. on this earth. still.

anyway, that last one, I had to read it at work. for whatever reason, my computer closes Internet Explorer if I go to Vanity Fair’s website.

“the charging sky” by Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins, driving back from Las Vegas to El Centro, eating a taco. the desert through there looks a lot like the above in places. not entirely. but close enough.

I want something else to write about, but all that’s on my mind is how I’m making way too big a deal out of, what I’ll call in online code, a flare-up I had with a friend here. it’s been really bothering me and I haven’t handled it very well, but suffice to say, it’s my fault and I’m dealing it with the best I can. and eventually I’ll calm down. I’m working on it.

what else.

they’re gonna kill this guy in Afghanistan for supposedly insulting the prophet. go ahead and click on the picture for the story, oh boy!
what’s most interesting about this is the position it puts Afghan President Hamid Karzai in. I mean, what the fuck is that guy supposed to do? he’s got to greet every dickhead high-end American diplomat that makes a PR event out of visiting his country, in front of his constituents. who a large portion of are religious zealots who live in a terrifyingly violent backwater stuck in the 14th century. who think George Bush is a representation of the devil.
you have to get those guys to agree not to execute that motherfucker. he supposedly circulated an article that questions the way women in Afghanistan are treated (it’s pretty bad, I’ve heard). elsewhere, the guy’s brother claims this is all about him, and that the exeuction of his sibling is in retaliation for his writing on local strongmen’s human rights abuses.

and this is some kid waiting for food from aid workers.