Posted by Lukas on November 09, 2009 at 09:00 AM in Government, History, Lukas' Posts, Music, Video Clips | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Just in time for Halloween, I discovered my own grave today. Apparently I died in November 1918, age 31, and am buried in some little town in Pennsylvania. Sluggo and I are planning a road trip to go visit Dead Me very soon. If you'd like to find Dead You, then I recommend searching your own name at FindAGrave.com, one of my favorite websites. (My thanks to Find a Grave Member Beth for locating Dead Me, and to Patty Matthews for the photo of Nanticoke Cemetery.)
Posted by The Iowa Firecracker on October 30, 2009 at 10:40 PM in Bronwyn C's Posts, Current Affairs, Film, Government, Sex | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)
I've been a devoted collector of all the fine, fine, superfine commemorative state quarters, issued five a year for 10 years from 1999-2008, especially up through the 2005 quarters when anybody--school kids, pancake-house artists, lunatics--could still submit design proposals. From 2006 on it looks as if the Mint decided they'd had enough, because after that the only designs considered were the ones the Mint came up with themselves. No more 26 amateur designs, like Florida! (And even then, look what they ended up with.)
I have written about the state quarters here on Beware of the Blog—more than once!—and just when I thought 2008 was the end of it, the Mint announced that 5 MORE special quarters would be released in 2009: THE COMMEMORATIVE QUARTERS OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA AND UNITED STATES TERRITORIES! Guam! American Samoa! Puerto Rico! THE NORTHERN EFFIN' MARIANA ISLANDS!
Posted by The Iowa Firecracker on October 15, 2009 at 10:23 PM in Bronwyn C's Posts, Current Affairs, Government | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBack (0)
Deaths come in pairs, and sometimes it seems that News of the Dead does, too. In the past week there have been two stories about the remains of Civil War soldiers in this area.
First there was the ceremonial burial of the remains of a
New York soldier who died at Antietam (Sept. 17, 1862—the bloodiest day of the
war, with over 23,000 killed). A tourist at the battlefield found some bone
fragments, uniform buttons, a belt buckle, and scraps of fabric about a year
ago; the buttons identified the remains as being that of a soldier from one of
the 24 New York regiments that fought that day. Government Scientists and
Experts had a go and decided the soldier was between 17 and 19 years old when
he died. That was about as much as they could figure out, so the bits and bones
were put into a box inside a “period-appropriate” pine coffin and sent to the
National Cemetery near Schuylerville. Civil War re-enactors stood guard over
the coffin until it was buried last week on the 147th anniversary of
the battle. The grave marker says it’s an unknown soldier who died at Antietam.
“We’re going to remember him as a hero,” says Donald E. Roy, the director of
New York’s Military Forces Honor Guard (and a civilian)—although, of course, no
one knows who the soldier was or what he really did.
Next was the story of John F. Wescott Jr., who was fooling
around with findagrave.com and discovered that his great,
great, great grandpa, Capt. Andrew W. Davis of the 8th Infantry Regiment
of New Jersey, was buried in an unmarked grave in Newark. Last Saturday the
Wescotts got together and installed a marker from the Veterans Administration
over the Captain, who died from the wound he got when he was shot in the leg at
Gettysburg.
These two dead Civil War soldiers caught my attention
because at the time I was reading This
Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, by Drew Gilpin
Faust. Of course I was aware that the Civil War changed the way death was
regarded in the U.S.—it furthered the development and use of embalming, for one
thing. But Faust’s book explains how far-reaching the changes were. The
slaughter brought about the Federal Government’s first foray into arranging its
citizens’ personal lives, caused people to reject their religious beliefs, and
resulted in both widespread sentimentality and cynicism. It launched a
tentative move towards women’s rights, created big advances in the field of
statistics, and made James Russell Lowell write bad poetry (and lots of people
write atrocious songs). It caused people to fret about identifying and
returning the remains of their dead—just like the box of bone bits in New York
and the Captain’s grave in New Jersey. It’s a terrific book, well-researched
and well-written, and I recommend it to you.
Thanks for reading my blogpost this time, and may God bless.
Posted by The Iowa Firecracker on September 22, 2009 at 08:12 AM in Books, Bronwyn C's Posts, Current Affairs, Government, History, Religion, Science | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Just after the 8th anniversary of the WTC attacks, I discovered this shocking cover of a 1976 Sesame Street special "Monsters on the Loose!" on David Icke's official forum. Click the link to read more about this story the government doesn't want you to know.
Posted by Lukas on September 14, 2009 at 09:00 AM in Current Affairs, Government, History, Lukas' Posts, New York City, Propaganda | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBack (0)
In the midst of our grand de-hoarding effort (Everything Must Go! preferably for cash) I came across a box full of scripts for “Truckstop Teaparty,” a radio show I used to do on WFMU. I’ve been told that people often didn’t realize there were scripts for that show, probably because I always sounded so befuddled, but in fact every word I said on-air was written out in advance. In fact, even the umm’s and uh’s were written out, in an attempt to make myself sound more “natural.” This was because I was so terrified of being on the radio that my mind went completely blank every time I went on mic. If I hadn’t had something to read, no sound would have come out of my mouth at all. So it was interesting to see what words were coming out in 1989-90-91.
Even more interesting were the hefty piles of newspaper
clippings I’d saved with every show’s script. These were news stories I’d
reference as I talked about “News of the Dead” or “Danger!” or any of the
various other regular Truckstop Teaparty features. It’s incredible to me that
newspapers—common, everyday tabloids--were ever so informative, with long,
well-referenced articles about all sorts of actual news. There seemed to be a
lot of stories about eroding privacy rights, the plight of homeless people, the
environment, and political upheaval in other countries: Iran, Romania, Panama,
Czechoslovakia, Germany, and so on. There were “first woman” stories (the first
woman to lead U.S. troops in combat, the first woman minor-league umpire, etc.)
and weird racism stories. There were way
too many stories about accomplished, talented people dying of AIDS. There were
stories about drugs, murders, serial killers, and the successful development of
the first genetically engineered foods. There was a story about how the first President Bush had admitted falsifying intelligence
information to win approval for the first war in Iraq. These newspaper stories were literate, well-written, and
told you something, and it was kind of shocking to see how much newspapers have
changed in just … well, okay, 20 years ,,, and how much everything else is
still the same.
Anyway, I threw ‘em all out. The only clipping I kept was a
torn bit of a longer article, the final three paragraphs of what apparently was
a review of something—a book or TV show involving Nat Hentoff?—written by
someone named Vince Passaro. Here’s what he wrote:
“Censorship begins in fear: fear of contradiction, fear of
insult and injury, fear of confusion, paradox and despair. Hentoff points out
that in many cases the censoring parties have valid objections to the material
they wish to suppress. Yet he also shows that the best way to deal with ideas
you don’t like is to inform yourself about them and counter them with ideas of
your own—to debate, in other words. But where does a culture learn the language
of debate? Currently, we willingly misuse the word to refer to the meeting of
opposing political candidates in which rehearsed speeches pass as answers to
predictable questions. If that’s what we call debate, it’s highly unlikely that
we’ll last as a democracy.
“In fact, the great censorship of our times is the
self-censorship of our reporters and editors, our writers of books, our
television commentators. Why is it that the Iran-contra story had to be broken by
a Lebanese weekly, although several American journalists knew of it? Why was
the great menace of Iraq trumpeted far and wide, with fancy graphics and
musical scores, while the arming of the menace, by us, illegally, is still only
mentioned in whispers? Why is it that there is so little discussion, in an
election year, of the S&L failures and a possible collapse, of greater
magnitude, in commercial banking?
“Like vampires or cave-dwelling fish, we have lost the
ability to live in light because no one has been shedding any. Unless you have
a $40-million production budget, it’s pretty much impossible to disseminate an
upsetting idea in this country; when you do, the crowds scream as if they’ve
been hit with acid. Hentoff, for all his fervor, never takes the parties
responsible for our condition to blame. We don’t need to be introduced to
school boards in the heartland to see censorship in action; all we have to do
is open our major dailies, or watch network news.”
“Major dailies”—who’s even gonna know what that means in 5
years? And yeah, I googled him. I don’t think Vince Passaro is writing book
reviews for tabloid newspapers anymore, and I don’t think any future Vince
Passaros are, either.
Thanks for reading my blogpost this time, and may God bless.
Posted by The Iowa Firecracker on August 17, 2009 at 06:46 PM in Bronwyn C's Posts, Current Affairs, Government, History, Radio | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)
I apologize, it's been far too long since I've used this blog to geek out on radio news. A few recent happenings have drawn me out of this whole "working in radio" thing and into talking smack about it on the internet for a few minutes!
First up: Webcasting Royalties
In case you haven't heard, webcasters and SoundExchange (the web streaming arm of the RIAA) have renegotiated terms for webcasting royalties. Instead of accepting SoundExchange's initial offer of web performance royalty rates that would surely put webcasters out of business, webcasters threw a fit (we were part of the fit), held rounds and rounds of negotiations, and over a year later accepted a new rate scheme that would only nearly put them out of business. These new terms, which for large webcasters is a minimum of 25% of annual revenue, have been lauded by some. However, if you look at typical performance royalty rates for satellite radio (6.5% in 2009), or ASCAP/BMI royalties for terrestrial radio (roughly 1 - 3%), that 25% figure starts to look bloated. Luckily for WFMU, NFCB and CPB made separate negotiations with SoundExhange including more affordable rates, and we are covered under these terms.
New FCC Chair
The Obama administration's nominee for FCC Chair, Julius Genachowski, was recently confirmed by the Senate. After outgoing FCC Chair Kevin Martin thoroughly angered congress and the public with scandalous antics like that Details magazine spread, relaxing media consolidation rules, and "losing" an important study on media ownership (and all the while leading the fight against broadcast indecency) Genachowski has some mopping up to do. The good news is, Genachowski has heard of the internet: he believes in net neutrality and might actually re-do the FCC's website to make it a little less 1996ish (more on the Genachowski team here). The bad news is, Genachowski leans towards the gestapistic view of broadcast indecency (he supports enforcing fines for fleeting profanity), and the FCC's main proponent of 1st Amendment protections, Jonathan Adelstein, will be leaving the commission soon.
Posted by Liz Berg on July 10, 2009 at 01:18 PM in Current Affairs, FCC, Government, Liz B's Posts, Radio, The Internet | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
After the unfortunate passing of Michael, everything from His favorite pill combos, to His child custody problems, to His music publishing issues, to His preferred brand of toothpaste have been dismembered, torn, and tossed into the final press to eek out any remaining dregs of data for the (us?) media vultures.
During this whole circus, you may have discovered that the guy from Toto actually wrote "Human Nature" (thanks Doron). Or perhaps you came across Michael's patent for "Method and means for creating anti-gravity illusion" (thanks Listener Colin & Ron) - PDF here, diagram below.
My buddy Dennis also sent along a few other patent documents filed by notable folks: images are below the jump, see if you can put a name to the images.
Posted by Liz Berg on July 02, 2009 at 11:17 AM in Government, History, Liz B's Posts, Science | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBack (0)
Posted by Diane Kamikaze on June 02, 2009 at 06:30 PM in Art, Diane Kamikaze's Posts, Government, New Jersey, Photography | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)
So last week I went to the gynecologist, and before I could see the doctor I had to sign a form that said I had read the 6-page “Notice of Privacy Practices,” effective date 4/14/03. They seemed pretty surprised that I actually wanted to read the Notice before signing the form that said I had read it. So they gave me a copy, and I did read it, and I was very relieved to see the section on National Security and Intelligence Activities. I have now given permission for my gynecologist to release medical information about me to “authorized federal officials for intelligence, counterintelligence, protection of the President, other authorized persons or foreign heads of state, for purpose of determining [my] own security clearance and other national security activities authorized by law.” I hope it makes the President and all those other foreign heads of state (Stephen Harper! Hugo Chavez! Kim Jong-il!) sleep better, to know that my ladyparts are thriving.
Thanks for reading my blogpost this time, and may God bless.
Posted by The Iowa Firecracker on April 27, 2009 at 12:22 PM in Bronwyn C's Posts, Current Affairs, Government, Sex | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
Twenty years ago today Liverpool was playing Nottingham Forest in an FA Cup semi-final soccer match at Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough stadium. There was construction work on the main highway from Liverpool to Sheffield and a lot of fans arrived late, just minutes before the game was scheduled to start. There was a big crowd at the turnstiles, and a lot of shoving as people made their way through a narrow tunnel that led to the standing-room pens behind one of the goalposts.
In retrospect, there were a lot of things that could have been done: The game could have been delayed; the fans could have been directed into less-crowded pens; the police could have pulled their heads out of their asses. Instead, there was a perfect storm of crowd hysteria, police stupidity, and bad stadium design. 96 men, women, and children died, some by being stomped on and crushed and some by compressive asphyxiation (they remained standing, but couldn’t breathe). Meanwhile, the soccer game started promptly at 3:00 and went on as the fans were slaughtered; the referees didn’t order the players off the field until 3:06.
In the aftermath, there was the obligatory government inquiry, an inquest that failed to take into account anything that happened after 3:15 that day, and the early retirement (with full pensions) of some of the police. One of Rupert Murdoch's so-called newspapers blamed the victims.
BBC News’ UK Web site has video of some survivors today; I thought Damian Kavanagh's segment was particularly moving. And most of the memorials feature an old Rodgers and Hammerstein song from the Broadway musical “Carousel,” which for some reason has been associated with Liverpool F.C. since the early 1960s.
Thanks for reading today’s News of the Dead blog post, and may God bless.
Posted by The Iowa Firecracker on April 15, 2009 at 05:04 PM in Bronwyn C's Posts, Current Affairs, Government, History, Music, Sports | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack (0)
Harry Stonebraker was well-liked in Winfield, Missouri (population 723). Last week he was about to finish his third 2-year term as mayor of the town, was running for a fourth term, and was pretty much expected to win. And he did win, by a landslide—90%. He didn’t let the fact that he was dead keep him down, nosirree. Elaine Luck, Lincoln County clerk, said, “I figured he’d win because he seemed to get even more popular after he died, just like Carnahan.” County Clerk Ms. Luck was referring, of course, to Democrat Mel Carnahan, who was elected U.S. Senator from Missouri in 2000 after dying in a plane crash. (Carnahan defeated Republican incumbent John Ashcroft, of “Let the Eagle Soar” fame.)
I never cared much for Missouri when I was growing up in a much-better neighboring state, and I really grew to dislike it during the year or so that I actually had to live there. I felt weird and out-of-place, although they did have the cheapest beer I’ve ever seen anywhere (Buckhorn, $3.00 a 6-pack), a lot of pinball machines, and the Kansas City Art Institute. But that was long before Missouri opened up the electoral process to dead candidates. Maybe now I’d get along there; after all, some of my best friends are dead people.
Thanks for reading my blog post this time, and may God bless.
Posted by The Iowa Firecracker on April 13, 2009 at 05:35 PM in Bronwyn C's Posts, Current Affairs, Food and Drink, Government, History | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
In
1970, Black Sabbath created what I consider to be the ultimate anti-war
song. Far from a whiny, folksy, gently
phrased call to resistance, "War Pigs" is an electric nightmare, heavily
drenched in gloom, placing war in its deserved, real-life horror context,
and re-casting our generals (and by extension, our statesmen) as "sorcerer(s)
of death's construction." The song is a perennial rock anthem,
and its riff-vocal-riff-vocal call/response pattern in the verses must be
familiar to almost everyone in the world.
In
2003, swollen with frustration over the new Iraq war (which continues to rage
on in idiocy), I was inspired to create a compilation of my favorite versions
of the Sabbath classic, as well as render a deconstruction of my own (see track
5.) The compilation was purely subjective and is not intended to be comprehensive
at all, hence the exclusion of versions by Rondellus, Gov't Mule, Sacred Reich
and Hayseed Dixie. Since 2003, I have added a very worthy interpretation by
Cake (complete with Latin brass.) Obviously, all these versions meet my
standard, but I'm especially fond of the opener, by hardcore-techno-gabber
freaks Doormouse.
War
Pigs, by:
Doormouse | Faith No More | PIG | Slaves on Dope | Sinistre! | Cake
If you have a Facebook login, you can join the Death and Hatred to Mankind FB Group—where our discourse on this great song can continue indefinitely....
Posted by WmMBerger on April 07, 2009 at 08:55 AM in Current Affairs, Government, History, MP3s, Music, William Berger's Posts | Permalink | Comments (22) | TrackBack (0)
YouTube: [link]
Posted by Lukas on March 01, 2009 at 06:54 PM in Current Affairs, Government, Lukas' Posts, Music, Video Clips | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBack (1)
Who'd have thought that Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper The Times would commission an Obama remix by none other than Cassetteboy? And yet that is exactly what happened last week, you can watch it here.
It doesn't seem to be possible to extract the video to post or embed it here, but I was at least able to get you an audio version in MP3: Cassetteboy vs. Obama - We Are The World
Posted by Lukas on January 25, 2009 at 06:53 PM in Audio, Current Affairs, Government, History, Lukas' Posts, MP3s, Propaganda | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Living in Chicago, I have been obsessed with Rod Blagojevich ever since his campaign posters plastered the city years ago. Like Gefilta Fish, it's a name I love to repeat over and over again...BLA-GOY-A-VICH...BLAG-OYA-VICH...BLA-GO-YAV-ICH. It's an ugly word that rolls around the mouth like a pair of soiled underwear, tumbling around your tongue and throat until you suffocate in glottal spasms.
...and of course the fluffy hair helmet, the creepy grin, the hilariously coarse Chicago accent...and this picture from my friend Andy Beaman.
Posted by Fatty Jubbo on December 16, 2008 at 04:34 PM in Government, Listener Fatty Jubbo's Posts, Sex | Permalink | Comments (23) | TrackBack (0)
I got my first Alaska quarter last week and it had a big old grizzly bear on it, which was kind of neat but it seemed to put an end to my hopes of seeing a US state quarter with THREE buffaloes. Kansas came out with their one-buffalo quarter in 2005
, and then North Dakota upped the ante with their two-buffalo quarter in 2006.
There were still some buffalo-possible states that could have come through with three buffalo—either Montana or Wyoming seemed kind of likely—but they didn’t. (If you are a true numismaticist fanaticist, you can check my blog post from April, 2007 to see what happened with Montana.) Anyway, once Alaska came in with the grizzly, the only one left was buffalo-unlikely Hawaii—OR SO I THOUGHT. But no!
It turns out that 2009 is gonna be the year of the Commemorative Quarters of the District of Columbia and United States Territories! I vote for the three-buffalo quarter from Guam! The Northern Mariana Islands! (Where?) It’s up to you, American Samoa! C’mon, Puerto Rico! Show us your buffalo!
2009 is gonna be the greatest numismatic year EVER.
Thanks for reading my blog post this week, and may God bless.
Posted by The Iowa Firecracker on December 08, 2008 at 05:09 PM in Bronwyn C's Posts, Current Affairs, Government | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)
Raymond Lyman has a problem. Let me rephrase that: Raymond Lyman has many problems. But I'll get to that in a moment.
City Council meetings in Scranton, Pennsylvania just wouldn't be the same without the city's most illustrious local schnook. Nestled among the many barriers to justice Lyman faces--large drifts of snow after a massive storm are totally blocking off the stop signs but the city doesn't send out its plows...we get the stupid, underpaid DPW guys plowing the street near Ray's favorite local greasy spoon; weakly enforced ordinances--the worst of them he was put on this earth to crush are the city council members themselves.
Videos start after the jump.
Continue reading "Raymond Lyman, The Scranton Avenger (videos)" »
Posted by Listener Jonathan Steinke on December 06, 2008 at 11:45 AM in Government, Jonathan Steinke's Posts, Video Clips | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)
I have some good news and I have some bad news. The good news is the people have spoken. Bad news? They've also sung.
Love givin' for our new President-Elect may not have come as hard or as fast from here as it did from those far reaches of Earth kids in school here still can't locate on a map. But it came worse. And there would have been far more from whence below vids came if time and work constraints hadn't kept me from the unmitigated joy of posting them. These three vids are insidiously bad. In other words, pure sweet gold.
Inhale (and he actually DID) to the Chief-Elect!!!
Posted by Listener Jonathan Steinke on November 08, 2008 at 01:14 PM in Government, History, Jonathan Steinke's Posts, Video Clips | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)
If you missed out on WFMU's special Election Day webstream, fear not! Electile Dysfunction '08 archives are available right here.
Enter WFMU's all-spin zone of political music, comedy, commentary, and audio art with your favorite DJs. You can check your hologram interviews at the door.
Thanks to Hatch for spearheading this effort!
Posted by Liz Berg on November 05, 2008 at 01:28 PM in Art, Current Affairs, DJ Crap, Government, History, Liz B's Posts, Music, Propaganda, WFMU in General | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
















