Love Me Do

And finally, the Rolling Stones are much better than the Beatles.

Now admittedly, this Stones versus Beatles thing is decades old. But it rages still through the halls of nursing homes the world over.

Oh, oh! Low blow!

Not a successful one, but low.

Hell, I could run a pipsqueak like you through a Beatles marathon what would rip your heart out. 'Cept you weren't even born yet, that's how much you know.

Of course the Stones are the better band . . . But that is hardly the point.

The point is, the Beatles were, well, the Beatles, and you will never know a revolution in your whole life like the one that beset our ears, summer of '63. The DJ's were teasing the hell out of us with this weird and weirdly compelling sound, playing over and over, She loves you, yeah yeah yeah . . . and then the way they dropped into the minor chord,And you know that can't be bad ... who had ever heard anything like it/

You think they rose to Jesus-level over nothing? I know what you think, dudes like you, you think the Beatles were just a bigger Back Street Boys, or Boys on the Next Fucking Block or whoever it was.

No.

The Stones are deeper, nastier—and hey, unfair advantage: they've got Keef. But back then? Ruby Tuesday. Nuff said?

The point is, the Beatles music was and remains wonderful, the foursome, besides being Master Rocksters, always dear, always unbeatable. Perhaps it was their dearness, as persons, which never hardened over, even as it grew more sad, that had something to do with their immediate and permanent grip on the heart. Which, as you can see, is a whole nother discussion from the Stones, whose grip is on quite a different part of the collective anatomy. Isn't it.

Okay. I win. And when I do have The White Album blasting the nursing home one day—Why Don't We Do It In The Road—this will be in no way a watered-down oldster experience. I may still be avoiding Start Me Up, but only because it will get me going about an old boyfriend (just ran a quick check: yup, three chords in and I'm still outta there, I miss the bastard so) ... and yes, in case you were wondering, I will be in charge of the tunes, who better?

Oh, Crispy boy, try and think afore you write, next time. I can't be getting all stirred up like this, I got work to do.

Love,
Zo

Try Not To Shoot Yourself

The lib/dem/islamo's do not realize we are going to kick their butts come the next election because you do not want your family blown up at a mall any more than the rest of us do.

Boil it down, sir. Don't over-intellectualize.

Naughty Tommy

Such a cheerful, indicted? who, me? expression.

Surgical enhancements or no, does this face not radiate the very opposite of smarm? Sturdy American honesty. Good will.

Sorry, Tommy. Naughty felony. Naughty.

Nice try.

Six Theories Diverged In A Yellow Wood

Tim Grieve, Salon War Room: As the end draws near, Plame theories diverge:

1. It's not the crime, it's the coverup.
2. No, it's the crime.
3. It's about Dick Cheney's feud with the CIA.
4. It's about Scooter Libby's obsession with Joe Wilson.
5. It's about Rove.
6. It's really about Niger yellowcake.

And I, I took the obvious one.*

And my little horse did think it a hell of a mess.

*(Rove)

All Horse

So Dori is looking for just one tech-savvy woman to speak at Macworld Expo 06:

I've exchanged lots of emails and chats with incredibly smart, savvy women, all of whom say the exact same thing: ‘No, I'm not smart enough/tech enough/good enough to do that. You should talk to so-and-so!’ And then I talk to so-and-so, and she tells me the same damn thing.

I bet she does. This is at once what makes women so charming and so own-best-enemy. I could tell you that this, right here, is but one facet of that which allows at least one of the genders to set aside their own welfare for a minute and sit on the damn nest. We won't even get into the decision-making in the moment that makes up the days of those women who are mothers—or the number of baby men who take advantage of that fact. (You know my hope. You know my theory: the baby men are dying out. Going by my own son, anyway, I'd say its a damn good theory.)

I find it kinda refreshing, in this online world, in which the Buzzbrains—you know, all hat, no horse—appear to rule. Of course they don't. They don't rule anywhere. They too busy competing on, er, hat size.

C'est La Vie Say The Old Folks

The Washington Post went to the Stones concert.

Mick, Keef and Co. delivered an electrifying tour de force of a stage show that suggested their best days aren't all behind them.

Whether the Stones are still living the dream or simply earning a fabulous living is open for debate. It's only rock-and-roll, but you like it.

History needs an adjustment. For example, I, personally, still rock, and I think that “still” throws us off. We're used to qualities that ebb away in time, and with age—but this ain't that.

Like cool, like hip, like beat before that, whether you rock is a question of essence. It's like being white, or black, or Chinese, or female. Mick rocks, I rock, you rock (if you're lucky.) I cannot fully think what it's like in an old folks home, but put me in there with the Suits—what we used to call Straight—and I'm takin' my IV-on-a-pole and wheelin' on out.

You think I'm kidding. Where am I going to go? Somewhere I gotta be nice? Forget it, I'd sooner snort cyanide. (Would that hurt?)

Do Svidaniya . . . Please!

Time has been unkind to Lenin, whose remains here in Red Square are said to sprout occasional fungi.

Blech. After eighty years, I should think so. The Russians are very upset at the idea that this, this—WTF is it?—be moved or, god forbid, removed. Not that one often gets to see a memorial to someone made out of—himself. Now there's a semiotic brain-tweaker for you. Chemically frozen in time, the formalin version of resting in state. Clue, Uncle Joe—rest doesn't mean eighty years. I'm working on a theory: Stalin's last revenge. The line condemned to forever trudge.

I'm not poking fun at the Russkis, really I'm not. I just think when mushrooms become a factor, this is nature's way of saying, People! Give it up!

Dee-lusional

Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of MSN Information Services, was asked to comment on the perception that Microsoft is in the defensive position with regard to Google: “It's a great feeling to be in a more underdog status.”

Dee-nial?

Oh they try so hard to be regular folk. So hard. Not gonna happen. You have to understand, some computer geniuses exemplify, oh, just to pick a condition out of a hat, High Functioning Autistics: visionaries, high-flyers, single-focus . . . and others—hey, this is entirely random—more closely resemble plain ol' Aspergers, who, well-meaning or stinkers, have a life vision that pretty much includes: themselves. Don't get me started. And don't give me any crap, either; I already know it's a spectrum yada yada. My dad was a physicist who adored model trains . . and historic places, and Unitarianism (okay, worlds apart) and a million other things. My mother is . . . still with us.

As are, in theory anyway, an Aspie ex and an HFA ex, and having crawled into bed with both of them (no, not at the same time, smarty) I am here to say . . . keep on plugging, Redmond. You'll never get it, and the mountain of snark grows larger every year—you must wonder why that is.

My Credulity Hurts

During an appearance at a naval base in California, Mr. Bush characterized the war that he started in Iraq as the moral equivalent of America's struggle against the Nazis and the Japanese in World War II.

He didn't!

He did?

I'm feigning surprise. It was only a matter of time. All bets are off. Do you get the idea words don't mean the same way, to the Brokens, as they do to the rest of us? Of any political stripe? Then you would be correct, because not only is this desperation slime-ball, these are the workings of a brain many, many cans short of a six-pack. Clinically. As are the Dumpties all. Struggling, struggling.

And by god I bet poor George wishes the next three years were over right about now.


postscript: Bob Herbert's great lead in:

You never want to say that brave troops in Iraq died for the mindless fantasies spun by a gang of inept politicians. But what else did they die for?

Not a single god damn thing.

Humpty, Dumpty and Friend

Production thus produces not only the object but also the manner of consumption, not only objectively but also subjectively. Production thus creates the consumer. Production not only supplies a material for the need, but it also supplies a need for the material. As soon as consumption emerges from its initial state of natural crudity and immediacy-and, if it remained at that stage, this would be because production itself had been arrested there-it becomes itself mediated as a drive by the object. The need which consumption feels for the object is created by the perception of it.

Which is another way of saying, when I read, say, the cell phone reviews on Amazon, I get very, very depressed. Digital cameras, I even don't go near. You wanna know how low this nation's sunk that Humpty could even, A, get elected and B, Dumpty dismantle every last good thing he can get his hands on, it's because nobody is paying attention. They can't, they're too busy comparison shopping. Or just shopping.

There. That's all I can bear to say about capitalist society today.

U Can't Touch This

The Hammer Is down! That curled-lip white-boy cracker-sneer face I am so damn tired of seeing in the paper every day. When Elvis sneered, it was a thing of beauty (it genuinely was) but Tom Delay appears unable to assume any expression but that of a thief. A good ol' boy, down-home thief, right out of Tennessee Williams but for the fact that—well, it must be that some people wear their character nakedly, and that boy is low and unappealing. I guess he gives us one thing, not schadenfreude, but the repulsive sort of satisfaction as when the snake gets the whole rat within its belly. I believe it's called justice.