Archie Kobain

OK, so…

It took two weeks to come up with this…but you have to admit, my last post easily embodied at least two weeks worth of content, n’est-ce pas?  Oui.  For the first time in the six months (or so) that I’ve been back, last week was the first week where I just couldn’t make a blog entry (and the network said that we can’t do re-runs).  Perhaps I was a little derailed…  I was told by several readers that I seemed depressed.  I was also told that I was getting “difficult to read”.   Someone else said, “this is no Mariachi Static”.  

Hmmm…?  So, I decided to take a week off and reflect. 
I also had to prepare for the final day of destruction, which, by the way, is today, October 21st 2011.  This is according to Harold Camping, who originally said that true believers would be raptured, which I believe means “swept up to heaven” on May 21st of this year, while the rest of us would enter a period of judgement, until the final day of destruction – today. 

That’s great, it starts with an earthquake
Birds and snakes, and airplanes, Lenny Bruce is not afraid

I don’t know about you but, I have a few friends who I haven’t heard from in months.  Sure.  It’s possible that they’ve just been busy or stopped talking to me after reading my blog but, I’d like to believe they were raptured. Seriously, if only “true believers” were raptured, how many people is that?  Would we miss them?  Would any of us file a missing persons report?  And as part of the investigation, would the police ask questions like, “was he a true believer?”

Well, anyway, I hope you’re not reading this blog, because if you are, then maybe the world hasn’t ended, and now I’m going to be in a heap of trouble, thanks to Harold Camping.  You see, I owed the IRS a pile of money and had to send it in by October 15th, but I thought that, since the world was ending on the 21st, I’d just tell them to take a hike and instead, I blew the money on cheap booze and expensive women.  In fact, Brittney even named her latest album after our time together…

Shouldn’t that be “’til the world ends”, like short for until?  I don’t think till is a word.
So, hey…  Britt, just in case the world doesn’t end today.  Uh…  I should be home around supper time but, we should probably discuss an annulment.  Oh and, until then, you’re going to want to file separately, even if it costs a few extra dollars.

Getting back to my “depressing” blog entries…
I guess there are two things at play here.  1) You really lose something when your read what I write, instead of listening to me.  If I were to read this to you, which is unlikely to happen, you’d hear the way I intend for it to be read.  You’d hear the sarcasm and you’d get that even my most serious statements contain an air of comic relief.  2) Although I fully expected to take a break from my political commentaries, I’m not sure if I can do it.  These are political times that we live in.  Things are bad… and we need to fix them.

We live in a country that is supposed to be run by elected officials, who we elect as our representatives, to do the things we want them to do.  Instead, they lie, cheat and steal from us, and they make decisions based on money and the wishes of whoever is putting the most money into their election (or re-election) campaign.

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that money = freedom of speech.  They said that giving a political candidate money is equivalent to voicing your support of that candidate and therefore, making huge political contributions is protected under freedom of speech.  Is that bullshit or what?  It just leads to having bought politicians.

Congressmen now spend 50% of their time fundraising instead of doing the work that we sent them to Washington to do.  Every day, they have to attend a fundraising lunch or dinner or spend time on calling campaigns.  Reason being, 94% of the time, the candidate who raises the most money wins.  So, they have to spend most of their time chasing money and, of course, whoever gives them big dollars, gets decisions in their favor.  Essentially our goverment is bought.

Special interest groups, such as the petroleum industry, defense contractors, and Wall Street bankers are bankrupting middle class America by keeping us addicted to fossil fuels (while getting shitty gas mileage), keeping us involved in foreign military operations costing billions of dollars, and manipulating the banking system to rake in maximum dollars, while the average American can’t sell his house or even get a loan to buy a new house.  Instead he just sits by watching his 401K go down the drain.

Yep.  It’s two weeks later and…  Nothing has changed.

But is that really true?  Maybe some things are changing.  At least, it certainly seems like I am not the only person enraged with the way our country is being run.  First of all, I have to praise each and every person who has participated in the Occupation Movement.  I love the people who have been out there, every day, for weeks.  And I love when you say, “we may not (specifically) know what we want but we know that we don’t bankers and politicians running our lives or getting rich at our expense”.

Amen, brothers and sisters.

For those of you who haven’t made it to Wall Street during the occupation, you really should.  It’s electric.  And way better than all those movies that we saw, when we were growing up, with college students protesting in the 60’s.  This isn’t a movie or a history lesson (yet). These are genuine people who are sick and tired of a government whose hands are tied, and prevented from making the right decisions for the people of this country …by money.

I remain focused.
Oh, look a red head..

OK. Maybe more of a Cherry Blossom Pink head?

Alrighty then, let’s talk about my new “friend”, Dylan Ratigan…
You know, when I first heard of Ratigan, I was expecting him to be just another media guy… kind of like me, except that he worked for the mainstream media.  So, occasionally, he might fly off the handle with a rant about the state of our country but, in general, I expected him to just be one more media guy, acting like an impartial reporter while trying to push the agenda of one side or another.  Afrter all, that’s what they all do.

And maybe, if you were to interview him and ask about his political beliefs, I’m sure that he would have to be categorized as leaning to one side or another.  We can all be put into those silos.  But I really get the sense that, like me, Ratigan is tired of the democrats vs. republican bullshit, and right now, like many of us, he sees that the system is broken and that we need to fix things and make it a fair system for all Americans, before we can get back to arguing our personal politics.  I truly believe that arguing for either side of our bi-partisan system of today is like arguing about which brand of tires we should put on our race car, when we don’t even have an engine.  It’s stupid and pointless.

So, I don’t know and I don’t care if Ratigan is a democrat or a replublican, I actually don’t want to know.   It doesn’t matter to me.  What I do know is that Ratigan is a former financial services guy, who left that industry and went to work covering the finacial markets on CNBC, eventually landing his own show on MSNBC, The Dylan Ratigan Show. And this show, which deserves to be on during prime time, when more people could discover it, could possibly be the most important show on television.  As it seems to be all about taking back our country and getting the money out of politics.   Amazing.  I know.

Here’s an interesting blurb on Ratigan.

By what I’ve seen of his show, so far…  He seems to have a string of guests on, democrats and republicans alike, on a number of topics, but if they’re not in agreement that we need to get the money out of politics, he hammers them equally.  I love it.  

Now, please don’t think that I’m saying that I like Ratigan.  Don’t forget, technically, I don’t like anyone.  OK, except maybe Stonsey….but he brings me margaritas.  Doesn’t count.

We really need to get back to Todos Santos.

But I like what Ratigan is doing and, at least, the conversations that he is striking up.

And get this… 
Three weeks ago, he launched this website www.getmoneyout.com to try and collect electronic signatures and, as he puts it, build a digital wave to try and pass a constitutional amendment to get money out of politics.  Kudos, again!  Again, there is no democrat vs. republican bullshit going on here.  This is about ONE THING, ending private interest’s ability to purchase our government in a fundraising auction.

 Now the chances of getting a constitutional amendment passed are like a zillion to one.  As I understand it, there are amendments on the books from the 1800s that are still waiting to be ratified by the states.  But that one in a zillion shot is a shot that we should take.  And go see, in just over two weeks, he’s gotten over 200,000 electronic signatures.  Now if everyone tells two people, and they tell two people, maybe we have a chance at cleaning this thing up.  Yes.  It’s a long-shot that a TV show could change our government but just maybe, between this and the occupation movement, just maybe… we can focus enough attention at the root causes to our nation’s problems as to incite change. 

I’m with you, Dylan. 
Now, you…with the eyes, reading this… go sign the petition.
Here it is again: www.getmoneyout.com

Side note.  If you watch Ratigan’s show, he occasionally has on, as part of his Mega Panel, the awfully cute, relatively hot, British accent included, Imogen Lloyd Weber, who talks a lot with her hands – I keep thinking she’s going to smack someone.  Imogen is a political commentator, broadcaster, producer, and author of The Single Girl’s Guide.   Daughter of composer Andrew Lloyd Weber, Imogen now lives in New York City…  

What???   I was just in New York City. 
Ugh…  Another missed stalking opportunity.  I’d be a really bad stalker.

I guess I’ll go “old school”, which means email & Facebook
Hey, Gen…  Tweet me. 

Other people are welcome to use those too. 
Uh…  As long as you look a little like Imogen…

Now back to the Occupation Movement.
I’m not sure what this guy is trying to say but, this is pretty funny…

And finally, in the spirit of acknowledging change…

I am, once again, such a PC.
Once a diehard PC guys, about three years ago, I got experimental. I switched teams.  I retired my home PC and I got myself a Mac.  Now, I have to say, for the most part, a computer is a computer.  They are all basically the same.  It’s like democrats and republicans, they are mostly the same.  In fact, most people have no solid answer as to why they are a Mac or why they are a PC.   I mean, seriously… Outside of my friends who like to pickup chicks at the National Republican Convention, when you see a hot chick, do you care if she’s a democrat or a republican?   …or do you buy her a drink anyway?  Computers are really the same way.  You bring’em home, plug’em in, turn on the juice, press the right buttons and you’re ready to download porn.  Uh…  Yes.  I’m talking about computers.

Again, some people pick a computer like they are picking a favorite football team, they don’t even know why.  Some people think that having a Mac is like having a Harley and other Mac riders will give you the head-nod as you pass each other on the information super-highway.  Whatever.  They are both just computers and right now, they are more alike than ever, especially since Apple went to using Intel processors and released a Mac OS based on Linux, instead of the old “whatever it was”.

Anyway, when I first got the Mac, I felt like I still had to have Windows.  So, I installed the VMware thingy that let me run a virtual PC inside my Mac.  And, at first, I used it all the time.  Then, not so much.  I got used to using the Mac stuff and I almost never launched my Windows.  I really got to like Safari instead of Internet Explorer.  And, in general, everything worked as expected, but then came the time that I had to encounter the Apple culture and deal with Apple people.

First, my Mac-mini was incredibly small, cute and compact but incredibly difficult to work on.  Once upon a time I went to add memory to it.  It was almost impossible to open and Apple actually doesn’t want you working on this on your own.  So I had to find some online, third-party instructions on how to do this.  It actually told me to stick a screwdriver here, another one there and start prying.  Then, “when you’re sure that it’s about to break – pry just a little harder”.  Ha, ha..  That worked.

But then came the day when the thing didn’t turn on at all.  My only choice was to visit an Apple store.  At this store there were countless people doing nothing.  However, as I approached the service department, I was intercepted by an Apple drone with an iPad.  He wanted to know if I had an appointment.  I said, “no”.  So he suggested that I make one.  I asked if I could make one for right now and he basically laughed at me.  Then I asked if I could leave my Mac for them to look at and he explained to me that they don’t work that way.  First you have to make an appointment, then they’ll look at the computer with you.  Those are the choices.

It turns out that there was a third choice.  I threw my Mac-mini into a near-by trash can and ordered a brand new shiny HP with Windows 7, 8GB of RAM and one of those new Intel i7 Quad-core processors.  Woo hoo… It’s awesome, crazy fast!  My computing life has been restored, things are good. 

I’m sorry if you feel betrayed PC world but I’m back and I’m here to stay.

I guess there’s nothing left for me to say or do.  Maybe introduce this week’s musical guest and the act like a hockey player.  You know…  Get the puck out of here. 

OK.  This week we’re going to listen to Washington.
No.  Not Washington DC.  And No, this is not a political band.
They are an Australian band led by singer / songwriter Megan Washington.
Check them out.  Here’s Washington with Rich Kids.

Want to see more Washington?
I recommend these videos too…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x3h6-92NGA&feature=relmfu

and for a little live action…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xRTPHA04_A&feature=related

And I think that’s all the time we have for today…
I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s installment.  See you next week.

Mo… Fi amanillah.

And to the rest of you… Keep up the fight, my friends.

I believe it’s time for me to fly.

– Arch