The newest blog is Face the New Religion, this comment is dated June 2007.

A word, if I may...

On the subject of sports radio, sportscasters and any concomitant prejudice involving what these guys are doing:

Sports radio involves men calling in and complaining about their aggrandizing wives, mostly, creating problems that threaten to send them to the bar, the unemployment line, or even "Central Park".

"Why the hell are the Bills kicking our ass?" "If the Bruins don't get rid of Samsonov they are finished in the Eastern division" "Why doesn't Theo do something about those veterans", etc etc

The thing of it is, from my experiences with rap, punk rock and Asia, all these sportscasters are flat out positive about the future, as they are all big fans of this stuff. When the subject of the Replacements comes up, or Public Enemy, or when any other band is alluded to, there is almost no holding back: typically: "I can't believe that bleep. That's the bleep. We were sitting ducks. I must have put in so many hours with that material.... and on and on." The same goes for Asia. "Well, I guess I'll have to get out my Japanese dictionary for when Daisuke shows up.....pregnant pause....I mean it, .....etc etc."

So for all those who can't spend enough time attacking athletes, remember what Sports Radio is really there for: All those dudes who married beautiful wives who want divorces or something.

It's just a job, a public service, another genre of our world. If some guy is reading through baseball stats with his ear glued to his radio, 162x a summer, instead of crawling the walls because his wife is losing it, then that radio station better be there.

You would have to understand what it means, I guess. To those I know, who it seems to me should actually know better, who are looking at sports through a backwards telescope, wondering what it is that they were missing when it comes to all the time they put in avoiding the subject, I can deliver the goods.

Here's a clue: anytime they start talking about "records", you know what the deal is. Also, the March tournament is coming up; the word "cd" sounds a lot like the word "seed", as in "Tennesee should get a good seed. Boston College is definitely looking at the top half of the draw. PAC 10 is where it's at. It's possible amazingly enough, that Wisconsin might not get a top seed - but they're not just going to lie down when it comes to the third round against UCLA or somebody.... What the hell is going on with Florida? And of course, "Ohio State is bucking for Number One now, Columbus is rocking, Oden is the bomb, he should be looking at a nice apartment in Memphis or Boston" - "No, a nice house! What are you thinking?" "Well, I don't know, a nice condo in Back Bay is good, he certainly doesn't have to worry about the nickels and dimes", and so on and on.

"For artistes, society types, and social anarchists, when the adrenalin rainbow is not enuf..."

I started editing and writing microstubs at Kiswahili Wikipedia. I figured I learned Chinese, I can do this. It is mildly difficult, the key thing at this point being that there are noun classes in Swahili/Bantu, one has to think about particles. I did write a lot of one and two-sentence articles that weren't there, with the blessing of the site's administrators. Duke Ellington ni mwanamusiki ya Marekani. Soko la hisa la Dar es Salaam ni mikuu soko la hisa ya Tanzania. Yunnan ni jimbo ya China. It's great. The administrators helped, a lot, and I kept practicing until I had to rest.

Practice, practice, practice.

http://sw.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soko_la_hisa_la_Dar_es_Salaam

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This is pretty good. It's at eMusic and Newbury Comics.

The 2-7 - Revised March 07

SOLID
NWE - yup
NWO - yes
NYJ - uh oh

SALIENT
SDO - Dust in the Wind
IND - Science Fiction Movie Show
CHI - RE: Lovie Smith: Chicago truly is the second city when it comes to playing media games...
DAL - Hi, coach
DEN - "We're looking at Number One in the AFC West now, and we have that loss to SFO to think about all summer."

And here they come..
SEA - yup
PHI - Why did they break up what was potentially the greatest qb platoon of all time? Outkast meets Phish; Outkast wins.
CAR - as usual. Sometimes here in Mass I can get the Carolina station, because here on the South Coast its just flat water between here and there. I'm a Wake Forest football fan now.

Sleep Monitor
SFO (+) - think, it's the NFC, they could get be in the playoffs in 9 or 10 months.
MIA (+) - Maybe, maybe not.
NYG (-) - probably

and of course, 3/4 of the AFC North
BAL
CIN
PIT



Chinese New Year's happens at Super Bowl time and it affects how I think about the playoffs. It switched from Dog >>> Pig this year, at the Chicago - Indianapolis Super Bowl. This is the year of the pig, so McNabb, Jeff Garcia should do well, Detroit looking for a better year. Dolphins are just "Sea Pigs" so they might be excited.

It goes Pig >>> Rat at the Arizona game next February, so that transition looks ok for Oakland to look at a late season run, maybe they will push coachless San Diego around; Pig to Rat is also a Jets look, and of course Jacksonville is "Rat City" - at least, I have an MRR advertisement for a JAX hc compilation record advertising that fact.

Rat >>> Cow in 08 - 09 , its Tom Brady time again. There's a story, how this zodiac started; Buddha himself was down by the river and decided he was ready to start his "talk show", and he called the animals. The cow was the best animal and was in the lead and the rat was on its back; the rat jumped off right before they arrived so the rat is the first one.

During the Vietnamese War in the '60s, some natives of Vietnam used the phrase "Pig Dog" to call out Americans; it was derogatory because they were saying the Americans were traveling in reverse gear, moving from position 12 to position 11 in the zodiac. Its kind of affectionate to be called anything at all sometimes, the Vietnamese have the strongest tradition of fighting heroes.

Ya Gotta Support the Division

I hate to upstage my Chris D/Chuck D entry but "Ya Gotta Support the Division". If one is a Jets fan who is looking around after Sunday's game, and has some New England connections, you may as well think about Ye Pats. I would sure be on The Fan at this point if the Jets had won, after giving myself a day or two to readjust. The Division is everything. Greater New York is certainly right there with Philadelphia and Maryland in the "Resemble New England Category". With Andy Reid, Bill Belichick or Eric Mangini coaching, it's like Sean Payton: if the team loses it's more like a puzzle than a letdown.

So let's assume one likes NWE for some reason. If you're like me you may have difficulty getting around SDO's (officially it's SDG) sterile military culture. It's not an easy 'transition' or 'crossover', compared to SFO, SEA or a nonexistent Los Angeles team. And those electrical insignia; is one supposed to contemplate the sunny, direct, pleasing military disposition of San Diego as some sort of ultramild electroshock for depression, depression based on not living in a Mediterreanean climate? I, Mr Accountable, have a Mediterreanean heritage dating back to the 1600s in the south of France; I can certainly say that it's no joyride defending beach property from Vikings down through the millenia.

So I turn to rap with overt military themes and content to occupy the space in my musings that has to do with SDO. One could just turn to rock like Stone Temple Pilots, Chris Cornell, etc, but that's like rooting against the division. There is a lot of punk like MDC around, but that's not always good for naptime.

Master P and Mr Benjamin, among my rap collection of about 50 units, have overt military content delivered in a relatively non-oblique, rap-sponsible historographic manner. I found Mr Benjamin's "Mr Benjamin 2008" by searching through Sir Mix-a-Lot on eMusic; Sir's consistent descriptions of Fort Hood in Washington State are definitely interesting. Master P's "Only God Can Judge Me", in particular, can really make one think about how the draft developed in the south of America between the 1600s and the present. Just amazing, with a lot of non-work-safe material blended with the most unbelievably understanding presence of the military life for the man on the job. It's not very issue oriented, but after listening to the non-offensive version of Hail Mary on Only God Can Judge Me, one can open the doors of perception. It runs deep, to quote Econochrist.

Nuff said. Don't need to get 'fried' on David's Cookies and frappuccinos. There's a lot more to what SDO represents than what one can find there.

If one wants to get technical about it, software and computers and telecommunications equipment, written and built in SEA, NWE and SFO/OAK (and financed in NYG/NYJ), form the basis of our military security.

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Support the division: Next season it is perfectly reasonable to assume:

NWE 12-4
NYJ 12-4
BUF 8-8
MIA 8-8,

w/o the AFC North Indy - AFC East Baltimore - AFC South Miami geographic shuffle.

J-E-T-S What what what?

Chris Doherty (pictured above) grew up in Morristown, New Jersey and during his teen years spent time in New York, working part-time as a bartender at legendary CBGB's on the Bowery. He hooked up with some fellow New York City area musicians to form "Gang Green", a band that achieved a temporary immortality as the unofficial mascot of the New York Jets, also known as "Gang Green". Chris and Gang Green are known for really bringing speed metal to the punk rock sound, expecially on their later releases, including 1995's "Older....Budweiser.".

Chuck D, real name Carlton Ridenhour, grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, 20 minutes' walk from the Green Line. Chuck grew up listening to the nightly jazz show 'Eric in the Evening' on WGBH and his father, a professor at Boston University, had him reading everything he could bring home from the library at the Department of African Studies, where he was an Associate Professor while Chuck was in high school. Chuck, of course, went on to found Public Enemy, hip-hop's major early group, and is now a radio commentator and host on Air America, which, oddly enough, is based in New York City.

Chuck has often complained that because Public Enemy was a Boston hip-hop group, it did not receive the media scrutiny that it would have received in New York, comparable to rock bands such as Gang Green and New York hip-hop crews like Gang Starr.

Gang Starr sounds a lot like Pete Rock + CL Smooth, in case you didn't really know.

There's a double standard working with Sofia Coppola. On the one hand, you say "Wow, Sofia, that's a really good movie." The Virgin Suicides actually was pretty good. And on the other hand, in the case of extras in Japan blatantly dissing the movie and crew in the actual Bill Murray/Sofia Coppola movie, you say "Well, Sofia, why wouldn't you have taken care of this so as not to get slagged onscreen in such an offhand manner?"

As Husker Du said, "It makes no sense at all." Ms Coppola and Company, how do you suppose you are representing New York? It doesn't take much to be illiterate in Japanese. Anyone can do it.

Is the American Century really over? I hope not.

New York:

When you get caught between the moon and New York City, the best that you can do is fall in love....

Against All Authority

If you think Japanese T shirts are funny, well, it's a two-way street.

Logo of Banque Centrale de Madagascar, Madagascar's central bank, comparable to the Bank of England or the US Federal Reserve.

Guess Who's Back?

Hey Mao

There's nothing more psychedelic than a Chinese word, especially if it's unlisted. Compare the goofy-looking person, used in "California", "New York" and "Massachusetts" (and Jean Grae) to the following list of cultural references:
- The work of Robert Crumb;
- The work of Bill Griffith, creator of Zippy the Pinhead;
- Mad Magazine, Wacky Packs, etc;
- The "Goof" version of "Chia Pets";
- any stand-up comedian, viz Eddie Murphy as Alfalfa, Steve Martin, Horatio Sans, Downtown Julie Brown, etc.;
- Adult Swim characters such as Golden Joe from 12 oz Mouse, Earl from Squidbillies, etc;
- Beavis;
- David Lee Roth;
- the cover of King Crimson's Hall of the Crimson King;
- any really happy person in the movies;
- etc, etc.;

** Remember: "Any Chinese/Asian word should remind you of a happy smiling face." **

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Did you know?
That if New England were a state, it would:
- Have 12 Senators?
- Rank 5th in population out of 50, ahead of Illinois, w/ 14 million people?
- Rank 20th in size, right behind North Dakota, w/180,000 sq km?


Rhode Island is the home of the US Naval College, Sunny and Claus, Brown University and RISD. It was the original home of the Fleet Financial Group, which has become part of the Bank of America (BoA0.


California, especially Southern California, forms a continental island due to its location at the edge of the North American landmass, separated from the United States by plains, mountains and desert. Eminent Californians include:
North
- Leland Stanford
- John Muir
- Clint Eastwood
- Nancy Pelosi
- Margaret Cho
South
- Arnold Schwarzenegger
- Snoop Dogg
- Roman Gabriel
- Erik Estrada
- Valley Girls


- Forgettaboutit.
- Badda Bing Badda Boom!
- I got your na-chos right here!
- Out-of-towner: "You're right; that is funny."


Connecticut is the home of Keith Richards, Cotton Hollows State Park and Hammanasset Beach.

Massachusetts is America's "Gateway to Europe". Massachusetts geography includes forests; and Cape Cod and Spectacle Island on the Atlantic Ocean shore.

EXTRA CREDIT



JI GU WEI, or "Jean Grae".


Jamaica Stock Exchange. Note the sign of the logo.

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...faces come out of the rain...when you're strange....Jim Morrison and The Doors
"The Sex Pistols was originally conceived of as a 'Little Faces' type of band.....John Lydon in his autobiographical book "Rotten"

-Amy Klobuchar, Senator-elect, D-Minnesota USA
-Cd pamphlet J Church "Camels, Spilled Coronas and the Sound of Mariachi Bands"
-Shawn Alexander
-Wendy Meckie
-Some men w/a badge