And hilarity ensued

Did 'yall catch this little article? Usually, the New York State Senate makes me quiver with righteous fury. This time, though, I just can't help laughing. I mean, the Democratic State Senators have 30 parking spaces, while the Republicans have...? Take a guess. 60? 90? 120? Over 800. How big do they think the state senate is? Do they each drive 16 cars to work every day? Or do they each bring 15 aides to the senate sessions? 15 aides who all drive their own cars.

Even better: the Republicans had a secret television studio for recording commercials? Really!?


Okay, it is pretty upsetting that this is what the taxes go to, so I guess I can work up some righteous fury over that, but it's also just nuts enough to be completely hilarious. My parents are paying for the state senate to have a private printing press with a staff of over 200. This is the state senate that is famous for taking many, many years to do nothing.

Sigh. It's nice to find some humor in the grim state politics of today.

Light notes 2

As promised, the list of Music My Students Love. I am disappointed; I had hoped there would be some overlap between the lists.

1. "Sell Out" by Reel Big Fish
2. "Massive Wonder[s]" by Mizuki Nana
3. James Morrison's "Scream Machine"
4. Astrud Gilberto, particularly "Quiet Nights [of Quiet Stars]"
5. "Oh, Canada" by Five Iron Frenzy
6. The Beatles' three-song sequence "Mean Mr. Mustard," "Polythene Pam," and "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window"
7. Bon Iver
8. "Stuck Between Stations" by The Hold Steady
9. Elliott Smith's "Between the Bars"
10. "Siegfried[-]Idyll" by [Richard] Wagner
11. Radiohead, especially "15-step"
12. Kevin Volans, "White Man Sleeps, [Movement] II"
13. "Romanian Dance - first movement" by [Bela] Bartok. Which dance, I have no idea. This is a guess.
14. "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" by Vampire Weekend
15. Muczynski's "sonata for alto saxophone a[nd] piano"
16. Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 for piano
17. "Beggin" by Madcon
18. Of Montreal
19. Video game music, specifically that of Final Fantasy, Zelda, Super Metroid, Mario Bros.
20. Any guitar orientated genre most closely resembling rock.

Progression

Gary Younge has a very interesting column in next week's Nation (don't ask me to explain weekly magazine circulation--next week's came almost a week ago). A choice passage:

The transfer from protest to power is not an easy one, particularly for the left. We live in a state of dissidence, which makes the notion that we might one day take over the state apparatus--or indeed any apparatus--all the more difficult. That does not necessarily make us oppositional by nature--though some are--but we are antagonistic by temperament. Our work is never done. If it were, we would no longer need a left. Unaccustomed as we are to office and power, we are more likely to sign [a petition] than to receive [one].

So it is that even as Obama settles in to the Oval Office, with the full might of the wealthiest and most powerful state in the world at his disposal, many of his supporters still consider him the underdog. Having made this unlikely journey happen, they want to keep traveling in the style to which they have become accustomed even after they have reached the terminus. They wear buttons and display posters that demand that we "Hope" and "Believe," even as what they hoped for has happened and what once seemed incredible is now real.

But it's time to let that new reality sink in. The transition is over. We have moved from aspiration to destination. Obama has arrived. Tempting though it may be to savor the lingering aftertaste of a sweet, sweet victory, progressives need to take the posters down and the buttons off. These are no longer the emblems of resistance but of power.

A movement that does not champion the cause of the powerless has no right to call itself progressive. And a movement that attaches itself unequivocally to power does not have the credibility or wherewithal to call itself progressive. That distinction is of course much easier in times when those in power attack us and our values with impunity. But it is no less necessary when they don't.

I think Younge has some excellent points to make, but I think he also mistakes his audience, to some degree. "Progressive" is an umbrella term that covers a wide range of political philosophies and methodologies, especially right now. The progressives Younge is addressing are the somewhat rare Americans who embrace "progressive values" as a guiding ideology; the progressives who make up a huge percentage of the Obama electorate are Americans who took that label on as an emblem of one-time change, temporarily slipping into a little black dress that probably only sort of fits because they've been on a starvation diet for eight years. Readers of The Nation would like to consider themselves members of the former group; perhaps that's why Younge so casually assumes that Obama progressives are lifelong leftists. I don't think those folks (us folks) are the ones who need convincing, however. It's the dreaded liberals who are threatening the new leftist label who need to be quashed.

To some, bearing the sign marks a form of premature nostalgia for the days when all they dared do was hope. There is a place for that. But as Shepard Fairey's iconic poster of Obama goes up in the National Portrait Gallery, that place is rightfully in a museum. Along with the buttons calling to Free Angela Davis or Nelson Mandela, posters for the Poor People's March or placards to defend the Rosenbergs, they are important pieces of the nation's liberal history because they illustrate an important moment. But that moment has passed.

Move on, lefties, says Gary Younge. Most of us have, Gary. The ones who haven't? They still have those Mandela buttons and Rosenberg placards. That somehow reactionary radical nostalgia is an entirely different problem.

Light notes

I was going to just say "So Long, Dearie", but I figured I already posted an obituary for a wonderful musician this week, so instead I give you this:

My students were assigned (not by me) to write brief in-class essays on music they absolutely cannot stand, as an exercise in musical description. The music that pisses them off the most is:

1. Miles Davis with Marcus Miller in the '80s
2. emo/punk bands, particularly New Found Glory
3. John Cage's 4'33"
4. Bruce Springsteen in general, but especially "Queen of the Supermarket"
5. Koda Kumi's most recent album
6. Lamb of God
7. A piece he doesn't remember the name of, but the guitar solo is just one triad arpeggiated over and over
8. "Dark Blue" by Jack's Mannequin
9. "Beat of my Heart" by Hillary Duff
10. "heavy metal" (those are his own scare quotes around the genre), especially Meshuggah
11. heavy metal in general
12. Blink-182, "What's my age again"
13. Kings of Leon, "On Call"
14. "Monkey and Bear" by Joanna Newsom
15. NWA's "Straight Outta Compton"
16. Country music. All of it, apparently.
17. Phantom of the Opera
18. technical metal, particularly Look What I Did. Don't ask me what technical metal is.
19. "Soulja Boy"
20. Pachelbel's Canon

I didn't plan that order. The last paper in my stack was really and truly about hating Pachelbel's Canon.

Of the twenty songs/artists/genres listed, I can safely say I like at least four. Stay tuned for the next list: music my students love.

An email from my father

Hi [redacted],

If you want your tax report to be absolutely accurate you should each report 12 cents of interest from the Nassau Educators Federal Credit Union. I think you could be in Obama's cabinet even if you didn't.

Hope all is well.

Love, Dad

I am dust of men

RIP, Lukas Foss.

He looked at songs hidden in eggs.

Treadmill

Today I ran for five miles.


I didn't get anywhere.