rock over London. rock on, Chicago.

okay.
the bailout plan exploded today, at the White House. from what I’ve read, the Democrats and the administration showed up, and then we’re completely shocked that the Republicans — specifically the House GOP — weren’t on board. apparently, Hank Paulson got down on a knee and begged Nancy Pelosi “not to blow (the deal) up.” begged her. and she said, ”it’s the Republicans you need to worry about.”
no, this is not dinner theater. 
McCain, who insisted on taking the goddamned campaign back to DC so he can gain credit for saving us all, didn’t even bother to fucking comment. Obama, who followed McCain back to DC because that’s where the party was and he got an invite from Bush, he seems to be in blink-and-react-mode at this point. which, giving the state of affairs, is not necessarily a bad thing. and as of this writing, no one is even sure Friday’s debate is going down, because McCain may not show up. he’s said he’s not going to debate nothing until this shit gets resolved. because John McCain is putting country first. this is what his campaign’s all about, it’s his campaign slogan. except he’s not campaigning. did you hear that, everyone??? the campaign is officially suspended. now it’s just a giant clusterfuck, going nowhere.

Part I … in which I remain “on the fence”

it has been suggested that there was a consensus on the administration’s plan, and they were ready to rock with it this morning, but McCain’s return fucked it all up, gave the GOP cause and reason not to just vote “yes”. the House Republicans owe Bush nothing; he’s political poison and he’s gone in four months, so fuck him, they figure. we’re taking a stand on principled, free-market conservatism, and maybe they end up sharing it steely-eyed maverick John McCain, who has conveniently shown up so he can pretend he actually has a coherent opinion on all of this. they say his party will queue off of whatever he ends up doing. I don’t think he’s gonna do shit. what’s he gonna do, cobble together a plan of his own, or co-opt what the House Republicans are putting together?
here’s a coherent idea: Eric Cantor, the deputy minority whip from the Richmond burbs, he’s been circulating a draft that basically cuts into the bailout (the negotiated bailout deal would have handed Paulson $250 billion instead of the $700 billion he wanted … along with an oversight board) and replaces it with government-backed insurance. so the government doesn’t add hundreds of billions of dollars to the national deficit and the Republicans save face. you know, fiscal conservatism. that’s supposed to be their thing.
well, at least it’s an idea. I can’t say that I blame them. you know, the administration and the Democratic leadership are all screaming about how urgent this is. but that’s bullshit; if the Democrats thought it was that fucking important, they’d stop playing politics and just pass the fucking thing already. it’s not like they don’t have the votes. and about the president: personally, I wouldn’t piss on Bush if he were on fire; that cocksucker has called wolf too many times to be taken seriously at this point. and the Republicans, well, $700 billion is more than a lot of money: it’s A Lot Of Money. I can understand urgency … I guess .. but, you know, to hell with the markets. if they can’t handle a week of debate, no matter how unhealthy it’s about to become, then maybe it all deserves to fail. fuck it, I say. Thunderdome.

Part II … in which I explain why McCain is being a stupid asshole and why this political stunt will cost him

anyway, if my disgust for this crotchedy-old fuck isn’t clear enough, I don’t see how McCain comes out of this favorably. what has he done for the situation, except make everything painfully partisan? he’s in the spotlight, yeah, but I don’t know he would want to be at this point. he doesn’t seem to have any idea what’s going on – being simply present does not a leader make – and the spotlight is only going to confirm that.
and when this thing eventually works itself out in some anti-climactic conclusion, McCain’s going to be the one holding his dick. we will recap: he was there. there was a bitter, confusing, increasingly partisan battle over a massive economic crisis. on the first day he was there, McCain was nothing but a campaign distraction in the midst of this very serious issue, and now to presume: that’s exactly how it’ll play out Friday (though he’ll probably bitch out and end up at the Miss. debate) and then Saturday if this bullshit continues. 
even more, there simply isn’t enough time for the pundits and observers sift through the wreckage that has been the last week of political discussion and maneuvering. one of these two assholes is going to win the election in, like, 40 days. no one’s going to be able to process this into some soundbite to feed to the lowest common denominator with any success in such a short amount of time. fuck, most of America still hasn’t any idea what the fuck is going on in the markets, let alone in Washington. how the hell does the McCain campaign think they’re going to turn this around and into an easily-digested talking point so quickly?
meanwhile, Obama doesn’t have to do shit; if McCain wants to — and it sure looks like he wants to – then let him stand behind the highly-contested, debatable, mediocre decisions that all of this GOP wrangling will produce, it’s not going to end up being very flattering. Obama today, he asked Paulson a dozen questions during the White House meeting, so he got to look interested and involved. he kept it easy, simple. and now he’s going to Mississippi for the debate tonight, because hey, the campaign is still on; he’ll leave the flailing about to McCain. because, come on; there’s nothing to be gained by walking about the power keg that is Capitol Hill this week. there’s too much dynamite lying around, too much shit that could unintentionally blow up on him. so, let McCain walk among the landmines. show you’re paying attention, formulate a policy proposal, and vote on whatever the Senate comes up with. firmly. and that’s it. and if I’m ill-informed and this isn’t Obama’s strategy, then it should be.

Part III … in which I explain my glee

but still, it pleases me to no end that this is happening five weeks before the general election. really, to no fucking end. maybe I unwisely expressed doubt that this is really a crisis at all in the last paragraph, but it’s certainly being treated as such. because whether it’s needed or not I couldn’t tell you, but the Treasury secretary just asked Congress for $700 billion dollars. the chairman of the Federal Reserve is warning of a national recession. and last night, Bush basically said the sky will fall if something isn’t done.
so we now have something serious to talk about, and the candidates are going to have to respond. no amount of grooming and teleprompting and stupid asshole townhall rallies and dickhead sloganeering can save them now. this shit is raw, and it’s going to chew through both of them. I just happen to think that because of his recent choices, it’ll chew on McCain a lot harder.

one minute before George Bush speaks.
an unpopular and lame-duck president is gonna sell a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street to the nation. I’ve heard he’s going to use the word “calamity.”
I don’t know how the fuck he’s gonna do it; in fact, I doubt he will. he’ll have to be brutally honest, and say something like …

ohfuckhe’son.

.
9:02 pm. looks like he’s wearing a lot of rouge.
“(this rescue effort is aimed at) preserving America’s overall economy.”
9:03. “I know many Americans have questions tonight: ‘How did our economy reach this point?’” and then, ohmygod, he’s gonna try to explain it. influx of foreign cash, changing interest rates. and then … the housing market led to excesses and bad decisions …
9:04. “and then, with supply exceeding demands, housing markets fell.” ohhh. now I get it.
9:05. still talking about it. now we’re talking about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
I can just imagine some guy getting off his shift at Inland Steel, slugging a Budweiser, and watching this shit: “what in the hell …”
9:06. “with the situation becoming more precarious by the day, I faced a choice …”
“I’m a strong believer in free enterprise … but these are not normal circumstances.”
9:09. says he understands frustration of responsible American taxpayers. “not paying a bill now would cost these Americans more later.” and now, he’s explaining the bailout plan.
9:11. he says: this thing will pay for itself. because as we sell off these assets and calm market volatility, people won’t lose their homes and money will flow back into the federal reserve.  that’s paraphrased, obviously.
9:13: “(Democratic capitalism) has made this country the best in the world to invest and do business.”
except when it’s not, like now, and we have to basically clean the slate for the titans of industry. $700 billion mulligan! you all get a do-over. and then can continue on your way.

my brother said today, “this is just a way to continue trickle-down economics.”
you know what, fuck it. fuck it. let’s have some social upheaval. what have I got to lose? a couple grand in student loans and a shitty job? I’ll survive.

today in politics.
McCain says he’s suspending his campaign so he can return to Washington and work on a bipartisan effort to get this bullshit passed. he also wants to temporarily suspend Friday night’s scheduled debate in Mississippi. he called on Obama to join him in this. there’s gonna be a big dance-off at the White House tomorrow afternoon, when a national gallery of the same assholes who share the blame for this fucking mess will come together to save us all.
Obama told him to eat a dick; he’s going to the debate, and the corporation that runs the debates says the event is still on. so that means that McCain will probably go anyway.
as far as McCain going back to DC: you gotta acknowledge, whether it works or not, that it’s a decent political move. he’s been fading in the polls as the economy has melted down. it’s painfully obvious that McCain doesn’t have the slightest idea what the fuck he’s talking about, so instead of consistently losing this argument, he throws a splitter. it certainly beats losing.

now Obama has to respond to all of this “suspend the campaign” bullshit. he did, and it was: no. he’ll show up in DC tomorrow for an Oval Office circle jerk, but the game’s still on. because, really: why the fuck would Obama take the bait and follow a flag-bearing McCain back to Washington so McCain can pretend he has any grasp on the situation? ”suspend the campaign” my ass. the cameras will follow him anywhere. and John McCain is grasping at straws, trying to regain some sort of competitve edge that has eluded him over the last week. and only the dumbest of rubes would agree to that.
I can’t believe that McCain’s campaign would be as shortsighted enough to basically dismiss a debate like that. really;  during one of those events, I was convinced he’d close any gap he had at the polls. but instead, McCain’s gambled on some delusional idea that he’ll become the savior of the nation’s economic woes. he’s going to break the gridlock. he’ll somehow gain bipartisan support for a massively unpopular bill. 
think on it: he’s banking, hard, on the notion that congressional Democrats will defer to the Republican presidential candidate, that they’ll let him take the mantle of authority – thereby submarining their own candidate.
and while they’re stupid — oh god, are Democrats stupid — I don’t think they’re stupid enough to buy into this bullshit. “oh, McCain just wants to help! a proven economic policy neophyte is going to bring a fresh approach to this dire situation, completely devoid of ulterior political motives! sure, Mr. McCain; we’re down. what astounding economic observations, solutions, did you have in mind? lower taxes for people in an income bracket 95 percent of the country will never acchieve? GREAT FUCKING CALL.”

also: I’m watching MSNBC (there’s my bias for yous!), and even though Rachel Maddow is an obvious partisan — and lesbian – she’s not nearly as bad/grating as Keith Olbermann. that motherfucker makes my skin crawl.

.
as I see it, the naked chick is the American taxpayer. the guy with the knife, that’s the Bush administration/federal treasury/anyone associated with “Wall Street”. and the giant meathead in the helmet, full of animal rage, flying into the scene like a human missile? that’s Righteous Justice. the octopus at the bottom is Smith, and the crocodile is Josh. the crocodile is also gay. 

I read an opinion in the Wall Street Journal that basically laid out how implicit John McCain and many in his inner circle have been in the deregulation of markets in the last couple of decades.
I also read in the Washington Post that because of our impending financial doom, Barack Obama has opened up the first clear lead over McCain since the general election started. I didn’t read the whole article, god bless. but I’d posit to say that it isn’t because most trust Obama to fix the economy — he just couldn’t possibly know less about it than McCain. I’m sure Obama’s okay with that, though.

I’m not kidding though, if ever there were an interesting time to pay attention to politics, now is the time. Ben Bernanke — who comes across as an egghead and not someone you want to push in front of a bus — and Hank Paulson — who comes across as someone you’d want to put in front of a bus — walked into a world of shit at a Senate hearing yesterday. 

so. so here’s a quote form that story attributed to Paulson.
- “I’m not only concerned, I’m angry about the things that got us here. It makes me angry, and it makes you angry. You talk about taxpayers being on the hook? Guess what? They’re already on the hook. If the system isn’t stabilized, they’re going to bear the cost.”
act now, act fast, this must be done, etc.
and here’s a quote from some random Democratic representative named Taylor from Mississippi that you’ve heard of, which is exactly the point:
- “Where have I heard this before? ‘The Iraqis have weapons of mass destruction, and they’re ready to use them.’ I’m in no rush to do this.”

…
meanwhile, where I am, Virginia is facing something like a possible $2.9 billion budget deficit next year. I know this, because I read newspapers. now, that’s a relatively small faced with the larger Wall Street bailout or whatever insanely large sum California is dealing with nowadays, but still. the governor is calling on all state agencies to submit contingency plans in which they slash 5, 10, and 15 percent of their budgets. that’s a lot of money. it’s also an arguably bold way to address the deficit, but that’ll only hold if it doesn’t take a decade of underfunding public works.
anyway, a national implication from this: Obama can thank his goddamned stars, and his well-compensated vice presidential search squad, that he didn’t pick Tim Kaine as his running mate. or maybe he can thank dumb luck. I don’t know. Kaine’s big thing was a) he’s “southern” (no he’s not) and b) he had Virginia’s economy humming. and now it looks like that fun machine has taken a shit and died.

and now it is time to hate on Terry McAuliffe.
there’s a term limit for the governor in Va., so Kaine’s out in 2009. the state AG, I think — that may be wrong — he’s running unopposed for the GOP nomination, and there’s a couple of state senators vying for the Democrats’ nod. they’ve been going at it with a low heat for a couple of months now, but this foul chili is about to get a whole lot spicier now that Terry “giant bag of dicks” McAuliffe is apparently considering running for the Democratic nomination.

here’s my rundown on Terry McAuliffe are you ready fuck yeah you’re ready, let’s do this:
McAuliffe’s a party name, who’s worked on a dozen Democratic campaigns over the last couple of decades, either in a financial or managerial role. he’s very wealthy, and he lives in McLean. from 2001-2005, he was the Democratic National Committee chairman (who Howard Dean is now), during which he was involved with creating some giant donor database called “Demzilla” and making the DNC something like $500 million dollars.
he gets lots of credit within the party for this, apparently. because apparently, Terry McAuliffe has a lot of pull — he was chairman of the Hillary Clinton for president campaign over the last year, for instance. it seems that the Clintons love his ass. in ‘96 he was the co-chair of the reelection campaign for Bill Clinton and Al Gore.
so yeah. he’s a good fundraiser. and the Clintons like him. and he lives in McLean, which means he’s got his finger on the pulse of what’s happening in the state of Virginia. McLean and Big Stone Gap are basically the same place.
all of that being said, it should be noted that McAuliffe presided over the Democratic party when it routinely got its ass handed to it by the Republicans. who remembers 2001 to 2005? I remember it. the Republican party of the Bush administration started two wars and won reelection, while retaining majorities in both the House and Senate.
it is arguable that because Terry McAuliffe created a donor database and raised a bunch of dough during the time the Democrats were being treated like the new fish on cell block D, he laid the groundwork for the Democratic takeover of Congress in 2006, and the possibly the White House in November. it is also arguable that his ass had nothing to do with it. I prescribe to the latter theory.

so. so great job, Terry. you’re obviously leadership material. and since you’re so clearly not some asshole opportunist who treats a spin in the governor’s chair like something to tack onto your resume, by all means. you’re more than qualified to be the executive of Virginia. I’m sure you’ll have nothing but its best intentions at heart.
I wish I knew the Clintons. cronyism would get me a better fucking job than the one I have now.

.
awesome picture! naked chick and sea creatures.

the Bush administration, and by extension, the Treasury secretary, is getting pissed that the legislation for a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street banks isn’t moving fast enough through Congress. but many in Congress — and that’s congressmen from all over the landscape — don’t seem to give a shit.

last week when Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke went to the Captiol and said the national economy was going to melt right through the floor like a steaming pile of radioactive shit if the government didn’t float investment bankers the largest loan to the private sector in the history of the country, a handful of the attending senators and congressmen emerged to talk about how this was the gravest thing any of them had ever faced in decades of legislation.
“we have to act now.”
“we can come together to work pass this legislation.”
“this is a national emergency, and we will put bipartisanship aside, and get this done.”
“because if we don’t, we’re all going to die and it’s going to be 1929 all over again.”
“and who wants to eat shoe leather? ”
“do you want to eat shoe leather? fuck no you don’t.”
“because failure to act will be a sin the American people will not forget.”
“we need to act now. jesus christ, before we all die.”

but that’s all over with, four days later. the urgency’s still there, but the factions are back.

so. instead of another three or four paragraphs of sophomoric attempts at sarcasm, I’ll get right to the point.
and this is only with the knowledge of this financial crisis as I’ve followed it in the newspapers. but here it is, the run-on sentence you will some day meet in hell:
Rushing through Congress a $700 billion loan to Wall Street – Wall Street, that place most of us rank somewhere on the loathing scale between an afternoon at the DMV and walking through the corner of your back yard that’s full of dogshit — without even attempting to reign it in with further oversight and the basest of guarantees that those cocksuckers won’t exploit the American taxpayer any further than the loan already does (like extending the program to include credit-card debt and predatory car loans and guaranteeing that executive compensation won’t be impugned) …

… takes long, hard slug of whiskey …

… rushing this bill through Congress would be the most boneheaded, asshole move since our elected officials did the same thing with the authorization of the Iraq war in 2003. especially so, as there’s absolutely no certainty at all that this plan to buy up all of the financial market’s fuckups will actually work. so hooray that Congress isn’t just signing off on it.

that’s all. that’s how I feel about it.

oh, and in case the actions of the uberwealthy and the damage it could possibly do to the conomy hasn’t caused you stress-related migraines yet, read this article that details what the financial industry thinks of all of this wrangling. 
this is my favorite article of all in this post, so if you are to click on anything, please click on this one. it promotes such a visceral reaction of disgust and loathing for bankers that I actually find it hard to describe.
so, simply: fuck them. whoever they are.

to end: I’ve been writing on this blog for nearly four years now, and I’m back where I started: outrage at things I don’t understand. bad attempts at sarcasm. poor grammar, poorer metaphors. walls, that I build.

this is gonna be awesome, because this is gonna sound very wooden.

so I had a dream the other night. it was a sex dream.
this was a couple of nights ago, and so the details are hazy. this is how I find most dreams. if you don’t make an effort to record them, and I don’t, they slip away quickly.
so yeah, the sex dream. in this dream, I was having sex. with a girl. I don’t remember who, but I don’t think it was anyone in particular. normally, dreams where you’re having sex are awesome. but this sex dream, it wasn’t awesome. 
as I’d imagine most people do, I like focusing on what I’m doing when I’m having sex. I don’t think about politics or the impending stock market crash. no international terrorism, or what I’m doing in the broader scheme in my life. because right then, I’m having sex, and let’s be honest, if that’s happening, everything can’t be that bad.
and by god, I was trying to focus on sex, but the entire time I was having sex, I was looking at the clock. it was 11:30 pm, and production deadline for the newspaper was in half an hour. but time wasn’t moving. it was permanently 11:30, and whenever I got done fucking I’d have to go back to work and there would be a bunch of pages to put together. the newspaper office was in the next room, and it was waiting on me. I had work to do immediately. and as soon as I stopped, the clock would start again. this was inevitable.  
with this on my mind, I was getting nowhere, feeling nothing; just going through the motions. so eventually, I stopped. the girl looked at me, nonplussed. and then I looked down at my shit and my condom had broken.
and then I woke up.

and that was it. that was the whole goddamned dream.

I spend one goddamned evening not paying attention to the news, and the news goes and pulls this shit on me.

Treasury, Hill leaders plan massive bailout

according to Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, who, with quiverying double chin in tow, attended the Capitol Hill meeting with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson:

“This is a very serious moment, very serious. It was a very sober gathering. I’ve been in the Senate for 28 years; Congress 34. There has never been a moment as serious as this one.”

tomorrow will be an interesting day.

this financial crisis shit is just unbelievable.
and it is going to take another beer before I attemp to think on it.

okay. I’m working through this on my own terms. I don’t understand economics. or finances. I don’t understand money, in general. all I understand, is that I don’t have a lot of it.
except that this all basically happening because the American government has been deregulating financial markets for years, and Wall Street has subsequentially invented markets that fall under no one’s jurisdiction: not the Securities Exchange Commission’s, not the insurance regulators’. and they made tons of money on this shit until the bubble burst. but because there’s been minimal regulation of the way these companies do business, they’ve been allowed to take control of massive swaths of their markets, and then some. these motherfuckers are monolithic; they’ve got their hands in everyone’s business. so. if AIG takes a shit and dies – which is what was going to happen before the Federal Reserve announced it would float the company $85 billion, take over 80 percent of its assets and remove its board – it would trigger a chain reaction that could take down the entire economy.
am I getting this right? I’m trying. this is so hard to wrap my mind around, that it hurts.

you know, I want someone to focus my anger on. I said earlier at work tonight, that after AIG begged the Fed to give it a bridge loan so it wouldn’t go under, if I were Treasury Sec. Paulson, I would have said, “fine. but you have to walk the length of Manhattan in a clown suit while passersby pelt you with rocks and garbage. you miserable pieces of shit.” I wish it could be so base.
but it’s not that simple. there is no individual who’s responsible for this, it’s the culture. this is the free market without oversight. this is what happens when you “unfetter” business and allow it to do whatever the fuck it wants. yeah, you know, if we just let this shit go, it will work itself out, and the economy will eventually rise again, but not after dumping all over millions upon millions of people and their financial security.

eh. I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. except that the free market is John McCain’s dumb asshole answer to the millions of Americans without health insurance. that fuckwit. I’m disgusted. $85 billion because the American has no choice but to bail out a company – too large and important to fail – that deserves to be burned to the ground.

You know, the stock market fell 500 points today, and it’s times like this when I really hate Republicans.  If Republicans would get over it and stop acting like the government is a huge fat retarded child, like it’s something we should minimize and marginalize and fuck those yahoos who we elect to public office, if they would stop acting like that, then maybe it would help people realize that we keep getting the government we deserve, and when you act like a politician falls somewhere between used car salesman and door to door snake oil peddler, you get a bunch of lying thieving assholes.

I gotta say.
Sarah Palin gave her first, and so far only, interview to ABC’s Charles Gibson earlier this week. it’s being released in excerpts, so ABC can milk it for everything it’s worth. fair enough. as far as I know, Palin hasn’t agreed to — let alone given — any other interviews as of this writing.

much has been made of this sitdown. in the first released segment, Gibson asked Palin a bunch of foreign policy questions. the big gaffes that the media have made note of are: she suggested war might be necessary with Russia if it were in defense of a fellow NATO country, and she didn’t know what the Bush doctrine was.
on the way home from work tonight, I listened to about five minutes of the Diane Rehm show on the radio, where they interviewed a bunch of political pundits who said it was various degrees of incompetent and passing.
but they’re missing the point.
don’t worry, I know what it is. but I gotta go meet this guy for a drink right about now, so I’ll save the rest of this for when I come home and I’m probably drunk.

… I found mustard on the television remote when I woke up this morning …

okay, it’s been about 13 hours.
everyone is dancing around the issue with Sarah Palin on foreign affairs. it has been widely acknowledged that she’s been getting frantic policy lessons from her GOP handlers. even her supporters, when “analyzing” the Gibson interview, readily admit that. her detractors spend time mulling over the nuances in this performance, but what they should be talking about is that she simply doesn’t know.
she doesn’t know what the fuck she’s talking about. say that again. 
what, is she studying for a fucking high school government exam? she’s cramming on foreign policy, for christ’s sake. she doesn’t have an opinion on any of that shit, she’s just demonstrating that she can memorize talking points. that interview with Gibson was unnecessary before it even began because Sarah Palin doesn’t know what she’s talking about. the interview just confirmed it.
“yeah,” her defenders say, “but there’s a lot of different definitions of the Bush doctrine.”
okay, I’ll acknowledge that. fine. that doesn’t change the more-important truth: that she doesn’t know what any of those definitions are. because, again, she doesn’t know what the fuck she’s talking about. look, here’s an analogy. I once read the first twenty pages of Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer.” I can tell you what happened. but that doesn’t mean I have any idea what the hell was actually going on. Sarah Palin has proven she’s now familiar with John McCain’s worldview. great. we’ve confirmed she knows what John McCain thinks about the Georgian conflict. we still have no idea what she thinks about it. why? because she hasn’t thought about it ever, for all we know.
so who cares what she has to say? she’s no great mind on these issues, and her nationally televised display of rote memorization just confirms that. she’s just — unfortunately, I might add — a major party candidate. if McCain wins the election and then inevitably dies from old age, we’re all fucked, because this clown from Alaska will suddenly be in charge of everything. goddamned Republicans. they’ve got no problem putting an amazingly incompetent asshole in office, just as long as that asshole belongs to them.

I used to do this bullshit where I’d name a song, and then relate the memory I have associated with it. like, the other day, Josh sends me an email or a text message that says, ‘what’s the name of the David Bowie song that gives you chills?’ and he also called me ‘gay’, I believe.
so.
there’s a David Bowie song that at some point has given me chills, so I sat there and thought on it for a while, because I couldn’t remember which song it was … and I was at work and looking for an excuse for distraction. I answered ’starman’, which was probably right, but truthfully, it’s the entire album that it’s on. The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. is that name right? it’s something ridiculous like that.
anyway, that album’s the shit, start to back. I listened to it on loop when I drove out to California a couple of years ago, and now I don’t know where it is.
even more specifically, I listened to it between Jerome and Congress, Arizona. I had decided to get off of the interstate to ”see the countryside” on State Road 89, which took a ridiculously long time – but it was fucking cool, man. you’re quite high up when you get into Jerome, a mine town turned artist’s retreat, which is like fifteen buildings on the side of a mountain looking to the northeast and huge skies … and then from there you go through Prescott, a town large enough to draw fast food chains. and then you continue on south/southwest into nothing.
and then, just past this mailing address called Yarnell (I’m looking at a map), you come through a gap in the hills, and you’re on the side of another bare mountain and the dropoff is on your left and immediate. and when I crossed this peak, it was a Monday at sunset in the middle of nowhere. nothing on the horizon, no signs of life spare this massive, lonely, uninhabited water purification plant in the valley spread below, and everything ws red. this is because Arizona can be very red and dusty, like a Martian landscape. and ‘Five Years’ was playing.
and you could see for miles and miles, just red earth and orange sunlight and more faraway mountains to west, and I remember thinking, “Jesus. I’m far away now.”