As i don't want to start with an apology and thereby discredit myself out of the gate, i'm writing to let you know, first of all, that i've updated my links lists a bit and have added an RSS feed. If you have faith that i'm going to come back to life here and offer up acid punch bowls full of witty, if not brilliant, insights into the nature of existence in the 21st century, then by all means feel free to subscribe. i believe you'll get an email every time i post something new, a useful psychological tool for your disheveled writer, who could then use her blog posts in lieu of writing personal emails and thus avoid being accused of neglecting friends' inboxes. i've also added a Personal Links gadget, if you want to check out what strikes me as worth saving from the Guardian or read my anti-Bush limericks at MySpace.
My old comrade Jim is now working with the franciscans at Nevada Desert Experience, involved in various Las Vegas community works as well as maintaining their decades-long focus on shutting down the Nevada Nuclear Test Site and returning the land to its rightful owners, the Western Shoshone Nation. Kudos to Jim for being willing to live in Vegas and may the neon lights of Sin City not blind him. They're scheduled to do another action this week as part of Keep Space for Peace International Week of Protest to Stop the Militarization of Space. Coordinated through the Global Network Against Weapons and Nukes in Space, i believe the lengthy names of both event and organization speak for themselves.
This past summer, i also hooked up with Che Sudaka from Barcelona, a frenetic band with a big ska-loving heart. They have taken on the independence movement in Western Sahara as a cause celebre and deserve lots of kudos for doing so, it is a much-ignored part of the world aside from in Morocco, which insists on occupying it. This territory has the unique honor (?) of being the last place in Africa where one can still see the "curious institution" of slavery, alive but hardly well... More on that probably at a later date - CS are a great band and you should definitely go see them and support their work if they play in your locale.
Now for the apology.... well, not exactly an apology, but i've been getting lots of positive feedback about the blog and consequently, some ??'s about why i've been neglecting it in these trying times, so i feel i owe my small but illustrious fan base an acknowledgment (along with a note of thanks!) that yes, i've been a total flake in terms of producing words, but largely this is due to too much uptake of other people's babble... informative but mesmerizing... and i can be very easily mesmerized, especially when sick and trying to make sense of something that at heart, i really could care less about. Specifically, that would be the Obama-McCain-Palin circus and the public coffers bailout of Wall Street heavies, with its ripple effects throughout the globalized economy. At this point, i think i'm following the US election stuff out of pure addiction (it sure beats Brad and Britney); this must be so since the first song i listen to every morning is now Ship of Fools. Aside from Tina Fey's and Alec Baldwin's great Palin impersonations, the US electoral spam is not even entertaining. Just insane nastiness, and stupidity, more of the same old crap: nuclear vs. extinction, killing Iraqis vs. killing Pakistanis, helping the rich get richer vs. being rich and becoming richer... Palin's bounty on wolf paws is nauseating - literally - and she's yakking nonsense about climate change while her fellow - native - Alaskans are literally seeing their land disappear underneath a rising sea level. The Comedy Central folks have been on her ass big time, there's really not much i personally can add to their analysis. John McCain is a major creep and anyone who thinks he's a leader must also harbor secret fantasies about immolating Sikhs and polar bears.
As far as financial news is concerned, it's hard for someone who's never been very interested in money/finance to suddenly dig in and collect hoards of details which, all told, only reinforce my original position that the unreal nature of extreme wealth creates its own kharma of deserved yet likewise (somehow) unreal extreme crises. However, like everyone else whose got nothing to lose, i do have thoughts about the what's happening and a load of links to share offering comprehensible, tho sometimes offbeat, analyses of what's happened and where it's all potentially going. Subscribe to the blog and be the first to read a (loosely) anthropological deconstruction of the capitalist neaderthals' road to perdition.
Ok, that's my awkward lumbering back into the blogosphere after an undesired and delinquent hiatus. Leaving you with this curious piece about Truman Show Delusion, the ultimate 21st century plague, a culmination of all that individualism has to offer.
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