Happy birthday, Johnny
quote
I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.
picture HD
quote
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
Text
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
Write, for instance: “The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance.”
The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
On nights like this, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don’t have her. To feel that I’ve lost her.
To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.
What does it matter that my love couldn’t keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.
That’s all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.
As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me.
The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.
I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.
Someone else’s. She will be someone else’s. As she once
belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long.
Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her.
Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.
One of my favorite poems of all time. Even better in Spanish.
audio
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Title: Changes
Artist: Tupac
Album: Greatest Hits
I’ve been listening to some (older, late 90’s) hip hop lately. It’s not a genre I typically listen to—I really don’t like any of the current music out there. I’ve found that the evolution of hip hop as gone really really awry. Sure, there was always a misogynist/sexist, materialistic, egotistical quality about it and many songs I’ve listened to advocate a lifestyle I couldn’t necessarily agree with (alcohol, drugs, sex, guns/violence, etc). Nowadays, I am told by a few co-workers, there are songs out there about… cheeseburgers?!
But, I already appreciated some of Tupac’s songs because, although, yes, some were misogynistic, egotistical, materialistic, etc, etc, a few of them actually had meaning as he rapped about the struggles he faced in society as an African-American.
*
Anyway, when Obama won the election, I thought of Tupac and the line in this song, “We ain’t ready, to see a black President.”
Regarding this video of Obama on Letterman about Jimmy Carter’s statement, I was a little disappointed (but have to say that I only suspected there wasn’t any other way to answer it “correctly” from Obama’s point of view—as someone on the Bill Maher show said, “Americans don’t like being called racists.”) that Obama was so easy to dismiss the racist sentiments of this country. Certainly, racism still exists in this country!
For black people, the clear benefit of Obama is that he is quietly exposing an ancient hatred that has simmered in this country for decades. Rightly or wrongly, a lot of us grew tired of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, mostly because they presented easy foils for Limbaugh-land. Moreover, again rightly or wrongly, they were used to define all of us. …
But Barack Obama, bourgeois in every way that bourgeois is right and just, will not dance. He tells kids to study–and they seethe. He accepts an apology for an immature act of rudeness–and they go hysterical. He takes his wife out for a date–and their veins bulge. His humanity, his ordinary blackness, is killing them. Dig the audio of his response to Kanye West–the way he says, “He’s a jackass.” He sounds like one of my brothers. And that’s the point, because that’s what he is. Barack Obama refuses to be their nigger. And it’s driving them crazy.
(Via)
It’s sad that 10+ years later, how much further we have yet to go from what Tupac was rapping about.
Link
Aides to President Barack Obama are putting the final touches on a new strategy to help Democrats recover from a brutal August recess by specifying what Obama wants to see in a compromise health care deal and directly confronting other trouble spots, West Wing officials tell POLITICO.
…senior adviser David Axelrod said in a telephone interview
“I’m not going to put a date on any of this,” Axelrod said. “But I think it’s fairly obvious that we’re not in the second inning. We’re not in the fourth inning. We’re in the eighth or ninth inning here, and so there’s not a lot of time to waste.”…On health care, Obama’s willingness to forgo the public option is sure to anger his party’s liberal base. But some administration officials welcome a showdown with liberal lawmakers if they argue they would rather have no health care law than an incremental one. The confrontation would allow Obama to show he is willing to stare down his own party to get things done.“We have been saying all along that the most important part of this debate is not the public option, but rather ensuring choice and competition,” an aide said. “There are lots of different ways to get there.”
I want “all or nothing.”
Personally, I wouldn’t want a crappy bill to pass that is basically a hand-out to insurance companies, requiring everyone to obtain insurance policies, without an affordable option, or without some serious, SERIOUS, reform on ratings and exclusions.
I think about auto insurance and how there is an insurance commissioner (at this time, in each state) in charge of reviewing rating plans. Each car insurance company has to file with the commissioner with their proposal for a rating plan (the mathematical equation that weights risk). The commissioner monitors the companies profits or losses and allows (approves or denies) for changes in their rating plan where rates increase (if the company is losing so much money so as to not be able to pay out their own claims), or rates decrease (too much profit). Perhaps some sort of loss/ratio should be maintained? (This, assuming the health industry must be kept in the private sector because our congressmen are too chicken to vote on a public option.)
I don’t know if that will help much, because there is still an issue with hospital costs, malpractice suits, education costs, etc. It’s all f*cked up. Sigh.
Text
NSKEEP: Wait, wait — You would trust the government to look into that?
STEELE: No, I’m talking about the private — I’m talking about citizens. I’m talking about — (CROSSTALK)
INSKEEP: Who is it you — You said it is something that should be looked into. Who is it that you think should look into that?
STEELE: Well, who regulates the insurance markets?
INSKEEP: That would be the government, I believe.
STEELE: Well, and so what. Now wait a minute. Hold up. You’re doing a wonderful little dance here and you’re trying to be cute. But the reality of this is very simple. I’m not saying the government doesn’t have a role to play. I’ve never said that. The government does have a role to play; it has a very limited role to play.
INSKEEP: Mr. Chairman, I respect that you think I’m doing a dance here. I just want you to know that as a citizen, I’m a little confused by the positions you take because you’re giving me a very nice nuanced position here —
STEELE: It’s not nice and nuanced. I’m being very clear.
I also heard this interview when it aired and, yes, it was just as bad as the transcript reads.
picture HD
picture HD
picture HD
audio
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Song: Dreaming with a Broken Heart
Artist: John Mayer
Album: Continuum
Favorite John Mayer song. So sad, but really beautiful.
Text
[excerpt from “Dreaming of my Dad”]
I’ve been feeling so tense lately.
I haven’t been able to sleep much, at all. I would sleep for 4 hours, shoot up out of my bed, only to not be able to fall asleep until the last 15 minutes before I have to get ready to go to work.
Trying to take naps is annoying.
I lay there for what seems to be forever. 15 minutes in, I catch myself almost squinting my eyes shut because I’m so tense. I release and try to relax, but it doesn’t work, because another half an hour later I’m doing the same thing. I wake up after finally falling at least into the first stage of sleep for the short amount of time I did, only to feel resentful and annoyed that I can’t for the life of me learn to relax.
I go into work grumpy and half asleep. I feel myself twitching by the time hour 6 comes around. The last two hours are long. I wonder if I’ll be able to drive home without getting into a car crash.
