MGMT: This funny, sad, sunny day

All my life, “post-apocalyptic” has been a phrase used to describe the alarming future. After a bomb, most likely, we’d be eating mystery meat from cans and wearing aluminum shoulderpads and big hair. We’d be simultaneously grubby and overly made-up. And our innate savage nature would prevail.

But what if the apocalypse has already been and gone? What if we were it? The music of MGMT, a Brooklyn, New York-based electronic-pop band, perfectly captures the feel of waking up outside, mildly hungover, and realizing that the awesome party the night before had actually been the end of the world.

Yes, the music admits, there were things that we wish we’d done, before it all went boom. But supposing it’s better this way? After all, this crazy new landscape holds its own adventures. At the very least, it offers a bittersweet freedom, the chance to use this wreckage to serve the great god Fun.

Our culture’s spent the past eight or nine years perfecting its implosion, and can now collapse on itself with astonishing efficiency. MGMT suggests a bright side: our rules hold as much sway now, as do the ones that reduced our future to rubble. Clothe yourself in what you wish, and dance.

Eventually, one gets used to the dark undercurrent weaving its way through these crazy times.

City’s gone? Let’s go find a beach.

MGMT: “Boogie Down”

Olbermann: Mr. President, the war isn’t about you

Keith Olbermann’s “Special Comment” yesterday, May 14, was one of the most gut-wrenching political rants I’ve witnessed in several years. You can almost hear the heartbreak in a grown man’s voice, as he takes a seemingly-trivial series of quotes from a presidential interview, and uses them to crystallize these past eight terrible years.

There are times when impassioned snark splits open to reveal the honest truth–that there is something terribly wrong with our country, not just economically or politically, but culturally and psychically as well. Caring may seem futile, and bring only pain. But caring has kept the lights on in this haunted mansion of a country for eight long years, and it’s the only thing that has

***

“Mr. Bush, at long last, has it not dawned on you that the America you have now created, includes ‘cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives?’ They are those in—or formerly in—your employ, who may yet be charged some day with war crimes.

“Through your haze of self-congratulation and self-pity, do you still have no earthly clue that this nation has laid waste to Iraq to achieve your political objectives? This ‘ideological struggle’ you speak of, Mr. Bush, is taking place within this country.

“It is a struggle between Americans who cherish freedom, ours and everybody else’s, and Americans like you, sir, to whom freedom is just a brand name, just like ‘Patriot Act’ is a brand name or ‘Protect America’ is a brand name.”

***

“Mr. Bush, I hate to break it to you 6 1/2 years after you yoked this nation and your place in history to the wrong war, in the wrong place, against the wrong people, but the war in Iraq is not about you.

“It is not, Mr. Bush, about your grief when American after American comes home in a box.

“It is not, Mr. Bush, about what your addled brain has produced in the way of paranoid delusions of risks that do not exist, ready to be activated if some Democrat, and not your twin Mr. McCain, succeeds you.

“The war in Iraq, your war, Mr. Bush, is about how you accomplished the derangement of two nations, and how you helped funnel billions of taxpayer dollars to lascivious and perennially thirsty corporations like Halliburton and Blackwater, and how you sent 4,000 Americans to their deaths for nothing.

“It is not, Mr. Bush, about your golf game! And, sir, if you have any hopes that next Jan. 20 will not be celebrated as a day of soul-wrenching, heart-felt thanksgiving, because your faithless stewardship of this presidency will have finally come to a merciful end, this last piece of advice:

“When somebody asks you, sir, about Democrats who must now pull this country back from the abyss you have placed us at …

“When somebody asks you, sir, about the cooked books and faked threats you foisted on a sincere and frightened nation …

“When somebody asks you, sir, about your gallant, noble, self-abnegating sacrifice of your golf game so as to soothe the families of the war dead.

“This advice, Mr. Bush: Shut the hell up!”

The Tattoo, refreshed

I went back to Capital City Tattooz to refresh the tattoo of the constellation Orion I got recently. The brown dots, intended to resemble natural beauty marks, needed to be deepened in color a bit, and the biggest star—representing Betelgeuse–needed more red.

That’s better. The red had previously fallen out and needed to be redone, else it look like a muddled blue cross. When this heals, I think the two colors will be equally vivid.

I love my tattoo. I’ve always thought having a lot of beauty spots made me look like an inverse night sky—might as well run with the concept!

Angry Video Game Nerd: Dragon’s Lair

Epic Hilarity.

Abby The Kitten

Say hello to my new kitten, Abby.

As you can see, her cuteness is nearly lethal.