To quote apropos: Argh! Kill!

Missionaries won't give food to tsunami victims unless they convert

Samanthapettai, near the temple town of Madurai, faced near devastation on the December 26 when massive tidal waves wiped it clean of homes and lives.

Most of the 200 people here are homeless or displaced , battling to rebuild lives and locating lost family members besides facing risks of epidemic,disease and trauma.

Jubilant at seeing the relief trucks loaded with food, clothes and the much-needed medicines the villagers, many of who have not had a square meal in days, were shocked when the nuns asked them to convert before distributing biscuits and water.

Also, speaking of heathens, anyone catch this article last winter?

Bible Belt missionaries set out on a 'war for souls' in Iraq

While we're at it, I am sure you all want me to share with you what I learned from my personal edification project of reading the Left Behind series. The project it going slowly--I am reading them in sequence (although that is not really necessary as each book provides a "previously on the OC"-type recap in the beginning), but I refuse to buy them from any venue that will give a part of the proceeds to the Gruesome Twosome that pens this crap, so I have to wait until I stumble on the next-in-sequence book at the one English-language bookstore in Quito (called Confederacy Books, FYI) or it pops up at a book exchange.

My favorite part about LB is their attempts to be "hip" and to appeal to audience that is maybe on the margin of their demographic, rather than in its glowing center. There are inexplicable, yet priceless moments. Here are some of them:

Priceless Moment # 1, where the authors take their cue from Eminem's strategic "homofriendliness" in 8 Mile

One of our main heroes, Buck (a rogue journalist who is revealed to be a 30+ virgin) is in danger of being exposed: he is trying to keep his Christian beliefs hidden from The Antichrist who so far went from being the SecGen of the UN to the Potentate of the Global Community. His coworker with whom there has been many an altercation is not a Sister and threatens to expose him (it's a long story why but he is harboring a rabbi-turned-Christian who is a Wanted Man after basically being a Judah to his people and announcing on national TV in Israel that JC is the only one who meets all the Biblical qualifications for being the Messiah). Apropos of nothing Buck counterattacks with "you wouldn't want your private life talked about, right? Like, for example if you were a lesbian?" That shuts her up but good and later Buck's formerly-sceptical, but now-domesticated (see Priceless Moment 2, upcoming) wifey Chloe says she hadn't known the coworker in question was a lesbian. Buck replies that neither had he and implies that God armed him with this knowledge at the necessary moment. At some point a couple of chapter later Buck tries his usual conversion shpiel on Lesbian Coworker and she (justifiably might I add) hisses at him "I know how your God feels about people...like me." However, Buck isn't named Buck for nothing and will not be deterred; he trips her resistance before it's out of the gate with the following 100-carat diamond of logic: "Verna Zee^*, God does not say homosexuality is a sin, only homosexual sex. But heterosexual premarital sex is also a sin. God loves us all equally."

Priceless Moment # 2, designed to appeal to "feminazis"

Buck is figuring out a way to transport aforementioned Rabbi Judas back to Israel (that has so far been spared from every Judgement/Natural Disaster including the Wrath of the Lamb Global Earthquake, also see Jesus Landing Pad. His wifey Chloe wants to come with but she just got banged up real bad in the Global Earthquake. Rabbi Judas makes some comment about her condition, like "all that matters is that the little one here gets better." Although no character development could have predicted this, all of a sudden Chloe freaks out and says she is offended by being referred to in such a diminutive fashion. Buck laughs that she is going through a PC stage. Because political correctness--HAHAHAHAHAHA! That weatherman who announced Martin Luther Coon Day today was totally crucified on the cross of those feminazis and those uppity affirmative action minorities! Anyway, then Chloe delivers an impassioned speech about how she is prepared to obey her husband because she knows how much he loves her and she will defer to his Deity-sactioned Cartman Clause (Respect Mah Authority!) but she wishes that he would be reasonable in his decisions. And guess what, it works, he (after a face-saving grace period) decides to let her come to Israel. One small step for Chloe, one giant step for women worldwide.

Priceless Moment #3: The Allah-la-la-la
In the fourth book we finally have a named character who is an Allah-worshipper. He is a black market speculator and, essentially a war/tragedy profiteer, but he does supply our main Hero with a scuba diving suit so that he can go diving in the Tigris river looking for the body of his dead wife to make sure it has the Jesus Mark on the forehead which would definitely mean she wasn't a double agent for the Antrichrist (don't ask). So in the hierarchy of the book it is made very clear that Allah-worshippers are better than those allied with the Antichrist. This should be reeling Muslims right in!

^*for that be the Lesbian's name

Speaking of saving even more Muslim souls, The White House is trying to discredit Seymour Hersh now that Hersh has come on "Late Edition" and said that "The Bush administration has been carrying out secret reconnaissance missions to learn about nuclear, chemical and missile sites in Iran in preparation for possible airstrikes there." First of all, it's (gasp!) inconsistent of the MisAdministration to try and Dan Rather Hersh over something that is corraborated by their own Blueprint For World Domination. Secondly, "I don't believe that some of the conclusions he's drawing are based on fact," Bartlett said. Isn't it so cute how they are invoking "facts" after relegating peeps like Hersh and Suskind into the non-grata atavistic Siberia of the "reality-based community"?

Word to the wise: Seymour Hersh is pretty much all that left of the Old School of Journalism, you know, the one that at least cut its machismo with integrity and a commitment to investigative reportage. Seymour Hersh broke the My Lai massacre story. Seymour Hersh broke the Abu Ghraib story in the New Yorker long before any of the networks gigerly touched it with a ten-foot pole held in rubber gloves. What Seymour Hersh has to say about The Upcoming Wars should be heeded.

what is your favorite part? Mine is this:

"Under Rumsfeld’s new approach, I was told, U.S. military operatives would be permitted to pose abroad as corrupt foreign businessmen seeking to buy contraband items that could be used in nuclear-weapons systems. In some cases, according to the Pentagon advisers, local citizens could be recruited and asked to join up with guerrillas or terrorists. This could potentially involve organizing and carrying out combat operations, or even terrorist activities. "

I guess asking "are you a narc, man?" does not translate well from after-school specials to Global Entrapment Techniques. And the best part? Hold on a sec...we get to Do Terrorism in order to Stop Terrorism? You mean like 9/11?

To quote the brilliant Immortal Technique,
They control the ghetto, with a fear of attack
Tryin to distract the fact they engineerin the crack.

Musical musings

My throat hurt last night and my head was stuffed up so I took some Ecuadorian equivalent of Nighttime Cold Syrop, which rendered me incapable of doing anything except listening to my iPod on ADD shuffle (I kept getting bored with each song roughly 1 minute 40 seconds into it). A lot the stuff on the iPod was new stuff that I DLed/burned off people while in SF. Apparently I also found it necessary to keep a running commentary on the zombie DJ iPod party in my mind (TM The Onion and also apparently Ryan McGinley DJs with two iPods).

Here are my notes:

Iron Wine sounds exactly like The Clientele and Postal Service tries to sound like both of them and all of them sound like they would listed "Nick Drake" as an influence when advertising for band members.

Azure Ray sounds like Sheryl Crow meets Mazzy Star with surprisingly not-awful results (the awfulness on account of Sheryl Crow, not MS, obviously).

The Concretes are like Britta Phillips with the valium prescription cut in half (and I mean nothing derogatory by that, I like The Concretes and anyone who knows me knows I looove Britta Phillips).

Ryan Adams' cover of Wonderwall is surprisingly good

Damien Rice is creepy. Seriously, have you seen that video for "The Blower’s Daughter" where he is pretty much stalking some adolescent victim of the Potato Famine? It´s got Rob Thomas ethos all over it but, like, in sepia?

Deerhoof has songs that are all kinds of different and all of them sound like the various bands that my exboyfriend used to torture me with by putting them on early in the morning (It´s not that I hate Animal Collective. It´s more like tepid tolerance where The AC are concerned. But not in the morning. I like silence in the morning. And occasionally some Mozart and Prokofiev. But that´s IT.)

Dirty Vegas is like Enigma meets Chemical Brothers

The beginning of “Double Feature” by Luna is to “I Love You Because I have To” by Dogs Die in Hot Weather as beginning of “Everybody Cries” is to “Strange Currencies” )and it could also be beat-matched to “Take It Off” by The Donnas?

EVERYBODY has covered Wild Horses. But The Sundays did the best job.

Hefner demonstrates that some emo is danceable to and would even lend itself well to techno remixes. And that the UK can do (and has done) better emo-wise than Apple Martin(i)´s papa with his vaguely meta-liberal Politik

I don't get Joanna Newsom. And I have nothing per se again eccentric “I am an elf in a swamp” singer-songwriters. I mean, I was such a huge Tori Amos fan in high school that I had a pair of jeans on which I wrote in permanent marker “so you can make me come that does not make you Jesus” and I still shell out for every album she releases. But listening to JN's music makes me feel funny in the same way that that movie with Marcello Mastoianni does, it´s called "I Don´t Want To Talk About It" (and what a metaappropriate title!) where he falls in love with a midget but eventually she leaves him for a circus.

I only like Kylie when she is being bludgeoned by Nick Cave

Somehow, despite the obvious reference of the title I didn´t register before that Luna´s "The Owl and the Pussycat" was an actual lyrical re-do of Edward Lear´s poem, which makes the already lovely song a thousand times more lovely, as we go from

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.

to

Allison Andrews came up to see me
In a beautiful pea-green coat
Taking my pulse, feeding me pills
Wrapped up in a five-dollar note.

The band March Violets does not sound like what their name would lead you to believe they sound like

The best James Bond theme song was "From Russia With Love" performed by Matt Munro, with Madonna coming in a close second with "Die Another Die" for the line "Sigmund Freud, Analyze This!"

Yo La Tengo and Pavement are two very good very distinct bands yet there are tons of neither good nor distinct bands that manage to sound like both of them simultaneously, but, like, in a subpar bootlegged pale imitation way which is like an aesthetic slap in the face, you know, like if you have a crush on someone and you see someone who looks like them but, like the ugly version, through a funhouse mirror.

I think I had Spiritualized confused with some totally other band because I thought they were totally bland and they kind of aren't.

Listening to Xiu Xiu makes me want to medicate the lead singer

Air + Francoise Hardy = winning combo

Also, apropos of nothing, but here are a couple more pics from A. and mine jaunts around the country. I didn´t modify these pictures, that was all the cheap blue curtains on the 11-hour bus ride from Quito to Guayaquil and the subsequent twilight in conjunction with a strange bus light that was appended to the ceiling in the shape of, like, a trippy lilac surfboard.
( Read more... )