Six String Ink

American Idols

The Proprietor — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 14:01:30 +0000

ANNIE LEIBOVITZ AT THE DIA: Leibovitz has created casual, formal, and whimsical portrayals of music personalities in settings as diverse as juke joints, recording studios,
hotel rooms, rehearsal spaces, city streets and the expansive American landscape. Country singer Emmylou Harris appears against an ethereal twilight sky. Johnny Cash strums guitar with daughter Roseanne on their family porch in Virginia. Grammy award-winning rap artist Missy Elliot appears larger-than-life in diamonds and fur.

Shameless

The Proprietor — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 23:54:15 +0000

Via Talking Points Memo: Halliburton will help its combat-zone employees get the honors and recognition they deserve — if they promise not to sue the company.

I agree that in consideration for the application for a Defense of Freedom Medal on my behalf that. . . I hereby release, aquit and discharge KBR, all KBR employees, the military, and any of their representatives. . . with respect to and from any and all claims and any and all causes of action, of any kind or character, whether now known or unknown, I may have against any of them which exist as of the date of this authorization. . . .

Trouble ahead

The Proprietor — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 16:32:37 +0000

The Washington Post reports that conditions are ripe for a Florida 2000-type debacle in November, now that 80 percent of voters will use electronic voting machines, and a third
of all precincts are using the technology for the first time.

See here for the particulars on the Diebold AccuVote-TS, and here for a video on how some Princeton researchers hacked it to expose its vulnerability.

Lede of the Day…

The Proprietor — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 13:02:46 +0000

… comes, as usual, courtesy of my friend, Lisa, in Ft. Lauderdale:

Friday, Sept. 15 (AP) — A Nigerian murder suspect accused of killing
his brother with an axe told police investigators he actually
attacked a goat, which was only later magically transformed into his
sibling’s corpse, officials said Thursday.

The man, whose name wasn’t released, offered police his explanation
after his arrest on Tuesday in the death of his brother the previous
day at Isseluku village in southern Nigeria.

“He said that the goats were on his farm and he tried to chase them
away. When one wouldn’t move, he attacked it with an axe. He said it
then turned into his brother,” Police Commissioner Udom Ekpoudom told
the Associated Press.

Murder suspects in Nigeria, where many people believe in black magic,
sometimes claim spirits tricked them into killing. In 2001, eight
people were burned to death after one person in their group was
accused of making a bystander’s penis magically disappear.

Wow

The Proprietor — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 01:42:39 +0000

Ok, so maybe wow isn’t how most people would react to this, but how most people react to the quality of news media — with indifference — might explain why we have the news we have. Which is to say less and less of the real thing.

inkTunes: Trailer Bride

The Proprietor — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 12:40:46 +0000

Here’s a cool tune to start the weekend… if you dig the baritone guitar and a beautiful woman playing the saw.
Southern, and we mean Southern, to their core, Trailer Bride can hypnotize with their songs of sex, death, sin and redemption, or, if that fails, they can bring the house down with their wicked slide-guitar mojo abandon. They come from a land full of snakes, ticks, chiggers, dangerous, stultifying heat and humidity.

War without end

The Proprietor — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 23:29:39 +0000

WE NOW KNOW WHY the Bush administration hasn’t made the capture of Osama bin Laden a paramount goal of the war on terror. Emphasis on bin Laden doesn’t fit with the administration’s strategy for combating terrorism. Here’s how President Bush explained this Tuesday: “This thing about . . . let’s put 100,000 of our special forces stomping through Pakistan in order to find bin Laden is just simply not the strategy that will work.”

Rather, Bush says there’s a better way to stay on offense against terrorists. “The way you win the war on terror,” Bush said, “is to find people [who are terrorists] and get them to give you information about what their buddies are fixing to do.” In a speech last week, the president explained how this had worked–starting with the arrest and interrogation of 9/11 planner Khalid Sheik Muhammad–to break up a terrorist operation that was planning post-9/11 attacks on America.

This is incredible. But maybe not so.

“We seem to wallow in fear.”

The Proprietor — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 23:00:03 +0000

I can’t say I felt overwhelmingly manipulated by the five-year commemoration of 9/11, but that’s probably because I don’t watch television. This guy was sick of it, and he’s Greenwich mean time. Then again, on the occasion, it was probably too much to ask anyone within our shores to express this version of reality.

The causes remain the same: separatism, and religious nationalism dressed up as holy war.

What has changed, grotesquely, is the aftershock. Terrorism is 10% bang and 90% an echo effect composed of media hysteria, political overkill and kneejerk executive action, usually retribution against some wider group treated as collectively responsible. This response has become 24-hour, seven-day-a-week amplification by the new politico-media complex, especially shrill where the dead are white people.

See your dealer for more information.

For what it’s worth….

The Proprietor — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 22:36:23 +0000

Voters are expressing strong and consistent anti-Republican attitudes. The GOP lags well behind the Democratic Party on nearly all major issues, including the economy, Iraq, education, health care, the environment and the budget deficit. And the Republicans have lost ground in recent years even on such traditional strengths as terrorism and improving the nation’s morality.

A valuable service

The Proprietor — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 13:01:49 +0000

I hope more is to come….

Slate