Journal Archive - July, 2007

ok, monkeys aren't eating my face.

i'm currently sitting in the lounge at heathrow.  which is an airport.  in the uk.  and i've been sitting here for, well, a while.  6 hours?  ah, air travel joy.  left italy this morning at noon.  now it's 10pm in the uk and with luck i'll soon be getting on a flight to nyc.  an 8 hour flight.  so, 18 hours of travel?  eh, things could be worse.  at least i have a good book.  the life of pi(scine).  so far it's good.  maybe i'll take a turn for the worse.  or maybe it will end up being the best book i've ever read, laden with insights and life changing perspectives.  or maybe it'll be fun.  can you tell that i'm a bit, uh, delirious from lack of sleep and travel?  yup.  benignly delirious, though.  well.  except for the 4 hour uk - nyc flight delay.  still relatively benign delilrium.  and typing on some weird uk keyboard that seems to have been stolen from a computer graveyard circa 1982.  is this what life is like when you use pc's?  slow and clunky?  sorry, i guess i'm just accustomed to the sleek and hyperdesigned world of apple.  typing on these keys feels like being a court stenographer in 1937.  maybe this keyboard is made out of bakelite?  i hear that bakelite was popular in the uk pre and post ww2.  do you know about bakelite?  it's pretty cool.  i think it's made out of bug shells(carapaces).  'carapace' is a nice word.  sounds like an italian gellato, in fact it's the hard shell of a bug.  well, the top shell, right?  it must be nice to have an exoskeleton.  we humans spend a lot of time in exoskeletons that we've built for ourselves.  are we jealous of the bugs that are born with exoskeletons?  sleek and shiny on the outside, with all of the fleshy bits gracefully hidden beneath a glistening and adamantine carapace?  bugs are far superior to us.  they fall off of a table and they run away.  if we fell off of a building with a similar height ratio we'd end up as a pile of muck.  and bugs can eat anything.  and they can fly.  and they have amazing eyesight and sense of smell.  and regardless of what we do they seem to thrive.  so yes, bugs are our masters.  i can see this being taken egregiously out of context.  maybe some gossip rag will lead with '"moby: bugs are our masters"...bald vegan finally loses the plot in bug shocker!'  contextually: i'm just typing on an old bakelite keyboard in a departures lounge after not sleeping for a while.  so forgive me my ramblings. 

moby

i'm surprised that alternative energy doesn't get more support, as it:

a-enables us to be more autonomous, nationally

b-enables us to stop skewing our foreign policy towards foreign nations who have oil reserves but are also despotic, terrible places

c-is better for the environment

so, if you can, please sign this petition.
thanks
moby

dear moveon member,

did you know the u.s. right now gets only 2% of our electricity from clean energy sources like solar and wind? we have the technology. we know people want it. we just haven't had the political will.

but congress is voting this week on h.r. 969, a bill that will dramatically boost solar and wind energy. if it passes, it'll be like taking 37 million cars off the road.1 along with the rest of the energy package, it'll be the biggest step in two decades toward a clean planet and affordable energy.

big oil and coal are fighting the bill hard, because it would undercut their stranglehold on our economy. that's why congress needs to hear from the public that clean energy is a priority. so, today we're launching a petition:

"congress must act now to move our country toward a clean energy economy based on solar and wind power by voting yes on h.r. 969, the federal renewable energy standards act."

this is the moment on energy that we've been waiting for.

the bill requires utilities to increase the percentage of electricity produced from wind, biomass, geothermal, and solar energy sources. if it passes, utilities nationwide will produce 20% of their electricity from renewable energy sources by 2020. this bill alone will reduce 511 million tons of global warming pollution.

already, over twenty-one states and the district of columbia have adopted similar requirements. it's a tested and proven solution.

and because the bill allows utilities around the country to buy and sell extra renewable energy they produce, that means more competition and lower prices.

investing in renewable energy sources would not only curb global warming and protect the environment—the bill is projected to create over 185,000 new jobs, save consumers over $31.8 billion on their energy bills, and provide almost $67 billion in new capital investments in the next couple decades.2

here what's the san antonio express-news had to say about the bill:

whether one believes in global warming or not, taking steps to reduce our dependence on non-renewable fuels like oil makes sense. it will result in a cleaner, healthier environment for future generations, wean the nation slowly off its dependence on oil and save consumers millions in energy costs.3

congress need to hear from us now—the vote is expected to be close, and winning would be an important step forward. can you sign this petition now?

"congress must act now to move our country toward a clean energy economy based on solar and wind power by voting yes on h.r. 969, the federal renewable energy standards act."

http://pol.moveon.org/cleanenergyfuture/o.pl?&id=10885-722724-zu1avw&t=4

thanks for all you do,

–ilyse, carrie, wes, karin, and the moveon.org political action team
monday, july 30th, 2007

and, being high-brow, i just finished the last harry potter book.
who could've guessed that harry potter and voldemort would end up battling on the moon while wearing little moon suits made out of elf skin?
i mean, i don't want to give away the ending, but i really didn't see that coming.
nor did i anticipate harry killing ron in a fit of jealousy inspired rage.
oh, oops, car is here, time to go the airport.
have a nice weekend.
moby

i mean, really?
9:30 on a sunday a.m and i innocently go to look at the news.
and what's waiting there for me?
a headline:
"5 polyps removed from president bush's colon".
i think i just threw up a little bit.
i'm a fan of the aclu, and i love freedom of the press, but isn't there some news that should be restricted or censored in the interest of not making me throw up?
now i have the image of bush's colon(not the former secretary of defense)being colonoscopied.
and it's not a happy image.
it's disgusting.
but i guess i'm happy that the presidents colon is in good shape and, thus, won't prevent presidente el jefe bush from entertaining us with his non-stop cavalcade of ineptitude and malapropisms.
in fact, speaking of ineptitude(or evil, depends upon your perspective)this is the week that presidente bush will most likely veto a bill that extends health insurance to hundreds of thousands of underpriviliged children.
that's a sure fire way to boost your approval rating, veto a popular bill that enables sick kids to have access to health-care.
perhaps gw bush is just trying to recreate the traditional values of dickensian england?
maybe he's a fan of oliver twist, and he just wants to have little consumptive scamps selling violets on street corners instead of receiving health care(said health care would prevent them from selling violets on street corners, and, really, what is more picturesque, a child receiving health care or a child coughing up his lungs while selling violets on a street corner while dressed in adorable 19th century rags?).
well, we can all breathe a little bit easier(except for that adorable consumptive little scamp) now that el presidente is polyp free.
aren't there some details about the presidents life that could remain private?
i mean, dick cheney won't release records about the oil company honchos he met with when determining u.s energy policy but we know that the president had 5 polyps removed?
isn't that, forgive the pun, ass-backwards?
moby

a few months ago i went down to dc with my friend alexandra to see her movie 'friend of god'.
the movie was great, and after it ended we all went up to the hotel bar to drink cheap domestic beer(truly and sadly, my favorite kind of beer. my low-brow tastes don't just extend to die hard movies and trashy airport fiction, i also really like cheap domestic beer...mea culpa).
because it was dc(the land of politics), and because alexandra's mom is the first female speaker of the house, and because alexandra worked in news media for a long time, the bar was crowded with an interesting and disparate bunch of people.
acolyte's looking to touch the hem of speaker pelosi's garment. journalists trading stories about afghanistan. etc.
and i know that 'etc' is the lazy person's way of avoiding long winded or detailed
narrative. so be it. i like 'etc'.
at one point i found myself talking to some journalists about politics and travel and family histories. i told one of the journalists that i have a 1/2 brother somewhere(it's true, before my mom had me she had a baby who was put up for adoption) whom i've never met.
the journalist asked me 'do you have any idea who he is or where he might be?'
and i jokingly said 'maybe it's karl rove.'
ha ha. bar-room comedy.
a week later the journalist wrote this up as a story on politico.com(it must have been a very slow news day and/or week).
some tiny item 'moby's 1/2 brother could be karl rove'.
again, more comedy.
a few weeks go by and i get a letter from the white house.
i've never received a letter from the white house, by the way.
i was a bit surprised, especially as the envelope looked as if it was from 1952.
maybe they bought a few million white house envelopes in 1952 and they're still going through them.
who knows.
i open the envelope and read the letter(also on stationary from 1952).
here's the text:

"dear moby(or is that mr moby),

it's not me. i have no musical ability and am 19 years older(assuming you're 37).
so you can breathe easier.
on the other hand, james carville is musically-inclined and bald, too. do you like crawfish etouffee?
sincerely,
karl rove"

needless to say i was a bit stunned.
a letter from karl rove?
the architect?
bush's brain?
the man without whom gw would be doing the alligator on the floor of a hooters in biloxi?

i was also a bit stunned because the letter was funny.
karl rove is funny?
all of the pictures i'd seen of him depicted him as being quite dour and serious(this was before i saw the 'mc rove' videotape, confirming to me that he is, in fact, funny).

i called alexandra, who confirmed that the letter was for real.
so now i know a few things:

1-karl rove is not my 1/2 brother
2-karl rove believes that i'm 37(i'm actually 24)
3-karl rove is funny
4-the white house stopped buying stationary in 1952

ok, that's my story.
now i'm going to philadelphia to go to the mutter museum.
if you've never been to the mutter museum you really do need to go.
although it's not for the weak-stomached or faint(feint?)or heart.
but i love it, especially the soap lady.
-moby

maybe i've made this confession before.
maybe i haven't.
and this really is something that i should probably keep to myself.
but keeping things to myself isn't exactly my strong point.
ah boy, here goes.
or, maybe a pre-amble, a set-up, some contextualization.
i used to be a culture snob.
i mean, an obscenely annoying culture snob.
i would only listen to obscure records that no one else listened to.
i would only read obscure books that no one else seemed to like.
i would only see obscure movies that no one else seemed to care about.
and then, years ago, i saw 'terminator 2'.
and, to be honest, i loved it.
and the scales fell from my eyes and i saw that there was a world of populist art and culture that was fantastic and that i had hitherto been denying myself.
so now my culture tastes do tend to run to the, uh, 'low-brow'.
i still like some high-brow art and literature and culture, but more often than not i find myself gravitating towards the cheap and incredibly gratifying thrills of trashy pop-culture.
i know, this might be something i should keep to myself.
maybe i have a reputation as an uptight culture snob to maintain.
i may still be uptight, but i'm not a culture snob.
well, to clarify, i aspire to not being a culture snob.
some pop culture is still too loathsome for me to champion, but overall my tastes do tend to run to the populist and mass as opposed to the elitist and the exclusive.
tonight, for example, i went to see the new 'die hard' movie.
and, to be honest, it was flawless.
even it's flaws were flawless.
not all pop culture delivers so flawlessly, but this did.
my cup runneth over.
some of my populist confessions:
i like beyonce.
i rarely read a book that isn't for sale in an airport.
i rarely see movies that don't involve explosions.
and so on.
i know, i know, i'm a cheap, populist american whore.
maybe it's just a phase. maybe i'll go back to reading foucault and watching 'andrei rublev' for the 4th time and listening to stockhausen while eating brown rice and seaweed.
or maybe i'll read a michael connely book and watch 'transformers' and listen to 'dangerously in love' while eating an amy's burrito.
to be honest, it's a pretty heavy and seductive mass of utterly compelling pop culture to resist.
and again, a lot of pop culture is awful, puerile garbage. but when it's good(like 'die hard', for example)it's fucking awesome.
-moby

he/she is essentially america's top doctor and leading health expert.
here's an article from todays new york times...
yet another reason to profoundly loathe the bush administration, dismissing global warming and the special olympics as liberal issues.
the bush administration is a huge black stain on america.
read on.
moby

washington, july 10 — former surgeon general richard h. carmona told a congressional panel tuesday that top bush administration officials repeatedly tried to weaken or suppress important public health reports because of political considerations.

the administration, dr. carmona said, would not allow him to speak or issue reports about stem cells, emergency contraception, sex education, or prison, mental and global health issues. top officials delayed for years and tried to “water down” a landmark report on secondhand smoke, he said. released last year, the report concluded that even brief exposure to cigarette smoke could cause immediate harm.

dr. carmona said he was ordered to mention president bush three times on every page of his speeches. he also said he was asked to make speeches to support republican political candidates and to attend political briefings.

and administration officials even discouraged him from attending the special olympics because, he said, of that charitable organization’s longtime ties to a “prominent family” that he refused to name.

the special olympics is one of the nation’s premier charitable organizations to benefit disabled people, and the kennedys have long been deeply involved in it.

when asked after the hearing if that “prominent family” was the kennedys, dr. carmona responded, “you said it. i didn’t.”

dr. carmona is one of a growing list of present and former bush administration officials to charge that politics often trumped science within what had previously been largely nonpartisan government health and scientific agencies.

dr. carmona, 57, served as surgeon general for one four-year term, from 2002 to 2006, but was not asked to serve a second. before being nominated, he was in the army special forces, earned two purple hearts in the vietnam war and was a trauma surgeon and leader of the pima county, ariz., swat team. he received a bachelor’s degree, in biology and chemistry, in 1976 and his m.d. in 1979, both from the university of california, san francisco. he is now vice chairman of canyon ranch, a resort and residential development company.

on issue after issue, dr. carmona said, the administration made decisions about important public health issues based solely on political considerations, not scientific ones.

“i was told to stay away from those because they'd already decided which way they want to go,” dr. carmona said.

he described attending a meeting of bush officials in which the subject of global warming was discussed. the officials concluded that global warming was a liberal cause and dismissed it, he said.

“and i said to myself, ‘i realize why i’ve been invited. they want me to discuss the science because they obviously don’t understand the science,’ ” he said. “i was never invited back.”

dr. carmona testified under oath at a hearing before the house oversight and government reform committee headed by representative henry a. waxman, democrat of california. the topic was strengthening the office of the surgeon general. dr. c. everett koop, surgeon general in the reagan administration, and dr. david satcher, surgeon general during the clinton administration and the first year of the administration of george w. bush, also testified.

dr. koop, said he had been discouraged by top officials in the reagan administration from discussing the aids crisis. he did so anyway.

all three men urged major changes in the way the surgeon general is chosen and the way the office is financed.

maybe this already exists, but if it doesn't it should.
here we go:
cell phones.
everyone uses cell phones.
or 'mobiles' as they call them in the non-warring countries.
and everyone stores tons of stuff on their cell phones.
phone numbers, email addresses, text messages, photos, songs, etc.
you with me so far?
ok, good.
what happens when you lose your cell phone?
this is a rhetorical question, by the way.
you lose all of the stuff that's on your cell phone, right?
right.
so why don't cell phone companies offer a service whereby once a day(or week) all of the info on your phone is automatically backed up onto a remote server?
that way if you ever lose your cell phone you just get a new cell phone and push the 're-install info' button and all of your info is sent onto your new cell phone.
no lost numbers.
no lost messages.
no lost photos.
etc.
does this service already exist?
if yes, well, good.
if no, well, it should.
the rhyme is unintentional.
some enterprising cell phone company should offer this service and offer a competitive advantagie.
as an aside, what do you know about sufism?
i don't know anything about sufism.
it's also insanely hot in nyc.
which is awesome.
ok, goodnight.

-moby

i didn't go, but i heard that they were, uh, ok.
the one thing that still stuns me, though, is that almost no one in the 'stop global warming' camp talks about the environmental ramifications of animal production.
to quote a u.n article:

rearing cattle produces more greenhouse gases than driving cars, un report warns.

but barely anyone mentions this fact.
people talk about using compact fluorescent lightbulbs or driving hybrid cars(both good things, of course)but almost no one mentions giving up meat, even though livestock production is responsible for more than 20% of the greenhouse gases released into the atmospher.
again, to be blunt and plain:
livestock production is responsible for the release of more greenhouse gases than every car or suv or pickup-truck on the planet.
i've asked this before, but why wasn't this fact included in 'inconvenient truth'?
when the major news media report on global warming why do they rarely(if at all)discuss the role of livestock production in climate change?
it's kind of like talking about the causes of the civil war and forgetting to mention slavery and abolitionism.
or talking about someone with lung cancer and neglecting to mention that they smoked 2 packs of cigarettes a day.
yesterday at the 'live earth' concerts people were eating hamburgers and hot dogs and chicken, which is akin to getting drunk at the funeral for someone who died of alcohol poisoning.
it's just depressing that some huge truths about climate change are too inconvenient even for the well-intentioned left.
-moby

one of the most fantastic details about the scooter libby commutation has to do with one of clinton's pardons.
before leaving office bill clinton pardoned marc rich.
marc rich had been found guilty of tax evasion and other crimes.
and when he was pardoned by bill clinton the right-wing were very upset that bill clinton would pardon an indicted criminal.
so the fantastic irony in all of this is that scooter libby was marc rich's lawyer.
isn't that awesome?
scooter libby, the darling of the gop, was the lawyer for marc rich, a criminal pardoned by bill clinton.
nope, there's nothing at all incestuous about the goings on in d.c, not at all.
it may seem petty, but watching the bush administration and the gop continue to fall apart is really, really entertaining, and it makes for great tragi-comic public farce/theater.
-moby

i was watching fox news last night and they were:
a-running a list of people pardoned by bill clinton
and
b-asking why clinton wasn't thrown in jail for lying under oath

so, simply:

a-the people pardoned by clinton had committed crimes that had nothing to do with clinton. scooter libby committed a crime at the request of bush and cheney, and while working in the white house.
this makes bush's commutation of his sentence unjust and despicable.
kind of like 'go commit this crime for us, but don't worry, there'll be no real punishment,
we'll make sure of it'. ugh. gross.

b-clinton lied in a civil suit. and he lied about a blowjob. he didn't lie to cover up illegal actions that involved releasing the name of an undercover cia agent at the request of the president. and clinton was acquitted by the senate.
acquitted, to break it down for our right-wing buddies, means not guilty.
scooter libby was convicted by a jury and sentenced by a federal judge.
bush showed his contempt for our judicial system by overturning a sentence decided by a grand jury and federal judge.

the same right wing pundits who were outraged about paris hilton possibly not going to jail for a traffic violation are in favor of scooter libby not going to jail, even though he committed a federal crime before a grand jury, a federal crime that compromised national security and was committed, again, at the request
of the president and vice president.

this is a low point, even for the inept who currently live and work in the white house.

moby

p.s-it was roughly 4 years ago that bush pronounced 'mission accomplished' in iraq.
oh, and 4 years ago bush taunted the insurgents, saying "bring it on".
i wonder how the families of the tens of thousands of soldiers who've been killed and maimed since then feel about bush asking the insurgents to 'bring it on'?

it seems oddl
kind of limited, and odd.
here it is:

descriptive classifications of intelligence quotients

iq
description
% of population
130+
very superior
2.2%
120-129
superior
6.7%
110-119
high average
16.1%
90-109
average
50%
80-89
low average
16.1%
70-79
borderline
6.7%
below 70
extremely low
2.2%

the biggest question being: does a high i.q make you happy?
i know lots of smart people. they don't seem particularly happy in fact when they experience the lies foisted upon the general population by fox news and ton snow and the gop they seem to be particularly aggravated and despondent.
so, is high i.q a bonus or a liability?
this is not a rhetorical question.
moby

and it was really fun.
hopefully anyone in attendance had fun.
kudu and king britt and the beatards were great.
fun had by all.
i hope.
when did i stop writing in paragraphs.?
here's todays self-evident statement:
i love dj'ing.
it's so much fun.
i get to play other people's records and take credit for them.
who wouldn't like that?
kind of like walking by an awesome building and saying:
'oh, yeah, i made that'.
well, sort of like that.
it's 8;30 a.m.
aka: time to go to sleep.
goodnight.
moby

1-i'm dj'ing tuesday at the highline ballroom. kudu and king britt will be on the bill.
it should be fun.

2-on wednesday i'm bound and determined to find fireworks somewhere.
every year i try to see fireworks and i somehow screw up. last year i was way up high in a tower apartment, but accidentally on the wrong side of town.
year before that i was on tour.
year before that i was on my roof, which has no view of fireworks.
year before that i was on tour.
etc.
so wednesday i'm going to get a crappy aluminum folding chair from kmart and sit on the fdr near the fireworks float.
maybe i'll bring a cooler and drink bud lite out of plastic cups.
we are celebrating america after all.
seriously, i'm bound and determined to see fireworks this year.
even if it rains.
even if it hails.
isn't it funny that el presidente bush has decided to celebrate liberty and justice by overturning scooter libby's verdict?
the courts decided that scooter libby should go to jail.
so g w bush stepped in and overturned the juries verdict and decided that scooter libby doesn't need to go to jail.
must be fun to be the presidents friend.
so, the moral of the story:
if you are caught with an ounce of marijuana you get thrown in jail, but if you lie under oath and are involved in revealing the name of an undercover cia agent you don't have to go to jail if you're the presidents friend.
good ole american justice.

ok, hopefully see you tuesday night at the highline ballroom.
-moby