anarchivingentry

A Message to you Rudy-The Specials




The Dickies-Paranoid









I would have liked to post "Give it Back" by The Dickie's, but alas it is not on YouTube.
Keely and I played the "No Wave" compilation album (on blue vinyl?) nearly to death for the love of that song.
We all shared our punk rock and new wave albums amongst ourselves:
The Dead Kennedys, The Circle Jerks, later The Young Marble Giants.

We tried to see every show there was at The Showbox:
Devo, Ultravox, The (ubiquitous) Dead Kennedys, The UK Squeeze, The Germs.
It was 1979 and 1980...Derek was born. He was the first punk rock baby in Kitsap County to be sure.



http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=x2epq9eHW_E

The Dickies- Eve of Destruction

I saw video for the first time at the Devo show in the summer of '80. "Girl You Want." Sort of like this:



The music finally started to speak to and for us.
It thrust our spirits and minds out through the tops of our heads...we felt IT.
It was political, sexual, industrial tech, smart smart smart. A clean break from the mire of the decade.



The Dead Kennedys- California Uber Alles

I'd stay up late Sunday nights to hear an hour or two of ska, punk rock and new wave on KRAB radio.
(Listener powered radio we really did lose! Support KBOO if you can!)
Later we listened to "1540 AM, modern music for modern people, rock of the 80's, KZAM."
We read City Kids and Creem, soon we'd read Maximum Rock N Roll and the Rocket.
I don't remember the specific years, just the general action.



I loved Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, Elvis Costello, The UK Squeeze.
Everyone had a copy of Marty Thau 2x5 with the Bloodless Pharaohs...
it was sold for about a quarter at the used record store in downtown Bremerton.
A demo or something.



Me Andy, McKnight (both brothers?) and Ben saw The Dead Kennedys, The Fartz and The Germs (really?) at the Showbox in 1979. Were nearly killed for real...but thats a story for another night boys and girls...

Some August Images, 2008

The Bike Trail...




























All except "How to Eat a Lobster" were taken at Rich's 305 Diner...

My Response to Alaskan Women Reject Palin

The Christian Right is as much a menace as any religious fundamentalist organization anywhere.
Worse for US because they pose a threat to our domestic safety and global viability.
Any ongoing endeavor- be it a government, a religion, a culture or any institution- must retain flexibility and dynamism
if it is to survive.
The fundamentalist rigidity exhibited by the McCain/Palin platform is dangerously flawed in its lack of true representation of Americans.
Their rhetoric precludes discussion, dissension, and growth. I believe that if they're elected, (or seize the election as Dubbya did) the civil unrest in America will be palpable.
I know few women who feel that Sarah Palin is an apt representative of The (Thinking) American Woman.
I do know at least two women who are voting for McPalin, they're both knee-jerk Republicans, and each tends to believe that Republicanism IS Patriotic, that to vote any other way would jeopardize America's strength and identity.
Most fundamentalists cling to this type of fear-based identity like a security blanket.
Actively, intelligently CREATING and maintaining a representative government is PATRIOTIC.

Eve Ensler on Sarah Palin

This article comes to us courtesy of my niece, Ione, thank you my dear!

Eve Ensler, the American playwright, performer, feminist and activist best known for "The Vagina Monologues," wrote the following about Sarah Palin:


Drill, Drill, Drill

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.


I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.


But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.


I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.


Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It was a task from God."


Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.


She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.


Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the li brary, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.


Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.


Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.


I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healt hcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.


If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill." I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.


Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?

Eve Ensler
September 5, 2008

Arianna Huffington's Take on Sarah Palin

This morning in the shower I was thinking about how Sarah Palin is the Republican's Trojan Horse. Much to my surprise, Artis sent me this Trojan Moose article in an e-mail today! Thank you so much Artis, and since Arianna Huffington said it all so well, I'm just choosing to post the whole thing here...without permission...sorry...sort of.





A Very Good Strategy for Countering Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin: A Trojan Moose Concealing Four More Years of George Bush

by Arianna Huffington

Huffingtonpost.com - September 8, 2008

http://www.huffingtonpost.com

Did Sarah Palin wrongfully push to have her ex-brother-in law fired?
Was she really against the "Bridge to Nowhere?"
Did she really sell Alaska's plane on eBay, or just list it on eBay?
Did she actually have any substantial duties commanding the Alaska National Guard?

The correct answer to all these questions is: who cares?
Which isn't to say these aren't valid questions, or that Palin and the McCain camp aren't playing it fast, loose, and coy with each of them.
The point is that Palin, and the circus she's brought to town, are simply a bountiful collection of small lies
deliberately designed to distract the country from one big truth:
the havoc that George Bush and the Republican Party have wrought, and that John McCain is committed to continuing.

Every second of this campaign not spent talking about the Republican Party's record, and John McCain's role in that record, is a victory for John McCain.

Her critics like to say that Palin hasn't accomplished anything.
I disagree: in the space of ten days she's succeeded in distracting the entire country from the horrific Bush record -- and McCain's complicity in it.
My friends, that's accomplishment we can believe in.

Just look at the problem John McCain faced.
George Bush has a disastrous record, and the country knows it.
John McCain -- the current one, not the one who vanished eight years ago --
has no major disagreements with George Bush
(and I'm sorry, wanting to fire Donald Rumsfeld a bit sooner doesn't qualify)
and wants to continue his incredibly unpopular policies for another four years.
The solution? Enter Sarah Palin, a Trojan Moose carrying four more years of disaster.



And the plan has worked beautifully.
Just look at what's being discussed just 57 days before the election.
Is it the highest unemployment rate in five years?
The bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac?
The suicide bombing yesterday in Iraq that killed six people and wounded 54 --
in the same market where last month
a bomb killed 28 people and wounded 72?
That the political reconciliation that was supposedly the point of "the surge" is nowhere near happening?
That Iraq's Shiite government is now rounding up the American-backed Sunni leaders of the Awakening?
That the reason 8,000 soldiers may be leaving Iraq soon is so more can be deployed to Afghanistan where the Taliban
is steadily retaking the country?

No. We're talking about whether Sarah Palin was or was not a good mayor, whether she was or was not a good mother, whether her skirts are too short and her zingers too sarcastic.

Contrary to what we're hearing 24/7 in the media, the next few weeks are not a test of Sarah Palin.
The next few weeks are a test of Barack Obama.

He needs to dramatically redirect this election back to a discussion over the issues that really matter --
the issues that will impact the future of this country.
A presidential campaign is a battle
and this is the time for Obama to show some commander-in-chief skills.
I'm not talking about calling Palin out for lying about his record and demeaning community organizing.
I'm talking about grabbing the political debate by the throat.
The country is already angry about what's happened over the last seven-plus years --
he shouldn't be afraid to give voice to that anger.
Obama has spent years adopting a non-threatening persona; but he can't let his fear that appearing like an "angry Black man"
(a stereotype not-too-subtly fueled by Fox News)
will turn off swing voters and keep him from channeling the disgust and outrage felt by so many voters --swing and otherwise.

McCain's team, in an effort to distract, is going to keep doing what they're doing -- diverting voters and the media with a tantalizing combination of personal trivia and small lies.
It doesn't matter if they're caught in them -- in fact, all the better.
Because they know there is no way in hell they can win if this election is about the big truth of the Bush years.

McCain's real running mate is George Bush and the failed policies of the Republican Party.
Even if they are dressed up in a skirt, lipstick, and Tina Fey glasses.



[Arianna Huffington is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, a nationally syndicated columnist,
and author of twelve books. She is also co-host of "Left, Right & Center," public radio's popular political roundtable program.

In May 2005, she launched The Huffington Post, a news and blog site that has quickly become one of the most widely-read, linked to, and frequently-cited media brands on the Internet.

In 2006, she was named to the Time 100, Time Magazine's list of the world's 100 most influential people.

Originally from Greece, she moved to England when she was 16 and graduated from Cambridge University with an M.A. in economics. At 21, she became president of the famed debating society, the Cambridge Union.]

More of Sum of Summer '08

Freight hopping OCF-Style






this photo courtesy of Miss Tibet


G'bye OCF 'til next year...via con Dios