How to win the war in Iraq.

Send this guy over there. He could run for president afterwards.

A strange insight into the world of advertising, unexpected by most

I'm working hard on my degree. I spend time in the computer lab. I type furiously, trying to squeeze all the precision and clarity from my blanched and strained mind. I read the help section on computer programs I don't understand, and say curse words when it doesn't yield a solution. I touch my face often. Usually when I'm tired.

I share the lab with advertising students. I hear them say things to each other, and I get insights.

One of them once refer to the "retarded market."

I wonder what this is.

"...the depravity and rawness..."

I haven't blogged because I've been busy. I've been distracted. Blogging has fallen out of the rhythm that marks my new life. You'd think I'm working on a master's or something.

Anyways, my old band, the Wires, made it onto the prominent podcast of Arya Imig. How I have missed his nasally voice!

It can be found here.

Also, I guess this is how my alma matter remembers me (look to bottom right corner.)

Blow-back: is a crack down on Portland's house-show scence on the horizon?

Although I'm stuck in a cornfield for the time being I still keep my eye on events transpiring in Portland, Oregon.

I found this week's WW cover article to be a very well done, and an extremely accurate portrait of Portland's house-show scene. I also found it acutely shocking.

No, I wasn't surprised to hear about all the underage drinking at house shows. Instead I was addled that so many people I know personally who were interviewed for the article spoke so candidly, and in such detail about activities in Portland that are so flagrantly illegal.

Here's an excerpt:

[Randy] Bemrose’s home is in North Portland, and he averages a few shows a month. He serves vegan food and occasionally champagne, and never charges admission. The shaggy-haired, quiet 27-year-old (who plays in a myriad of Portland bands, including Junkface and Swim Swam Swum) acknowledges that minors probably drink at his house, but he says drinking is less of a priority than seeing live music...

Bemrose also says that, as a homeowner, he’s aware of the possible consequences of minors drinking on his property—fines up to $2,500 and up to a year in jail, not to mention the lawsuits if a kid gets into an accident. But he and other Portland house-show hosts claim that when they keep things civil, they’re rarely hassled.

Portland Police Bureau spokesman Sgt. Brian Schmautz says officers rarely break up house parties and shows on a first visit. “We give the person an opportunity to shut it down,” he says. “We don’t go there and, like, give people tickets and take their crap away—unless they’re jerks.”

While living in Portland I was pretty well immersed in the city's house-show scene, and the above excerpt is a pretty apt description of the situation, as is the rest of the article.

However, I'm worried the article might have been a little too honest (they had a picture of Randy's house in the article!)

I'm concerned that some stodgier advocates of public safety will read this article and get the sense that Portland is being flooded with a quiet tsunami of underage booze parties, and will scream bloody murder to the powers-that-be to end these awful events.

I personally know a number of people interviewed in the article (as well as several others who were interviewed off the record) and are all gripped with a sense of anxiety that the OLCC and Portland Police are about to come down on the ciy's house-shows with the wrath of a very vengeful God who's royally pissed that his children have been drinking tallboys of Pabst.

I'm not writing this because I'm a zealous proponent of underage drinking, but I am of house shows. I have some very fond memories of standing in basements or living rooms in east Portland, late at night, with a frosty tallboy in hand having my conceptual understanding of music blown to bits by a by a band I would never hear on the radio or MTV (barf.) Besides, who wants to go to a bar and hangout with jaded drunk people and withering bar-hags?

But perhaps more importantly the whole ritual of house shows reaffirms that this music doesn't belong to corporate record labels, commercial promoters, Rupert Murdoch, or sleazy industry types but to anyone who can love the music without it being fed to them through a profit-motivated screen (regardless of if they're old enough to drink.)

Who would want to shutdown this:

Or this:

Or even this:

Who Says Vice Doesn't do "Real" Journalism?

It's been a while, but during the course of my lazy Saturday afternoon I checked out Vice Magazine online. I'm glad I did. Here are few pearls of insight into our increasingly tumultuous times.

Here's an interview with the iconic Robert Fisk.

VBS.TV (Vice's online video section) also had a markedly insightful video on Sudan.

Here's the first part:



The rest can be accessed here.

Actually, about all of the videos on this site look like they're pretty quality. It truly goes places other television is afraid to go.

The Most Friendly/Unfriendly Place in the World?

You know that old trite expression 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend?'

Well what about when the enemy of your enemy is a friend of your friend, who happens to be your enemy, and is a hated enemy of your other friend?

Eritrea has found itself in this unenviable situation.

I found the good Minister's reference to Ethiopian support for Eritrean Jihadists to be of particular interest. I guess they're just better friends with the enemies of the right people. Let that be a lesson to all Third World nations giving nascent support for terrorism!

But Eritrea doesn't seem that friendly anyways.


Well, at least among all this unfriendliness its comforting to know that Donald Rumsfeld and Eritrean President Isais Afwerki are friends.

Gives you a warm fuzzy feeling inside, if even you haven't been drinking, no?

License to IL.

I left Portland, Oregon. I really did. I've talked about it for a long time, but it happened. I got on a train and left.

The train ride included a snoring Mennonite gentleman headed to Los Angeles, and an acutely strong smelling odor that wafted out of my seat-mates cooler. After a detour to Colorado that featured taxidermied elk scrotums, a seven hour public transit ride through the Denver metropolitan area and a steady stream of microcosmic experiences that gave me new insights into the development of the American West, I arrived in my new home: Campaign, Illinois.

I've turned my back on a great, progressive city that is on the cusp of so much.

It's been rough leaving Portland, but after several years of diligently laboring away at Portland's alternative press, I've decided to pull the gear lever on my career.

In a matter of days I will begin my new life as a student of journalism at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, where I've won a generous scholarship. UI has a pretty hot department, that features a distinguished faculty that has produced a steady string of Pulitzer Prize winners, and whose alumni are staffed at news outlets of great influence and note (and elsewhere.) Hopefully, I'll have a proper salaried job after the experience.

Besides, the decumbent, corn-field dotted landscape with Champaign-Urbana dolloped right in the center is truly a breathtaking sight. For reals, I've had to go to the hospital several times already.

Expect the scope and shape of this blog to alter accordingly.

My name in print.

I have an article on steps rural coops are taking to promote rural energy in the most recent issue of Five Magazine, a publication on environmental issues.

The magazine can be downloaded here.