I know that I have plugged my friends (of the one-sided Imaginary variety) at The Awl a couple of times here already, but if you do nothing else that I tell you to do, you *must* go read their series on The End Of The 00's. Each written by a different author, they are all funny or sad or angry or heartbreaking or some combination thereof.
It's a depressing series, too, because I, like everyone else, have been pondering The Meaning of My Life and other such nonsense as we approach the end of the decade (bite it, nit-picking calendar pendants), and have been considering a blahhhhhg post on how happy I am that the Aughts are passing. Then I read an Awl post, and --- well, what do I have to say and how well can I say it, compared to, say, Natasha Vargas-Cooper?
At any rate, check it out. And I probably will still pen something in celebration of the new decade, and to say good riddance to the old.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Monday, December 28, 2009
You can go sleep at home tonight if you can get up and walk away.
Query: What does one do when one receives a text message from a phone number that looks vaguely familiar, yet one has no idea who the sender is?
Yesterday I received a slightly mocking text (regarding the football team I root for) from a Mysterious Person With A Vaguely Familiar Number. This is the second such text I've received from this dude/ette this season. I replied to the first one, saying something like "that's not a very nice thing to say," hoping that the response would give me some sort of clue to the sender's identity. Instead, s/he just said "it was a very appropriate thing to say."
What to do? Send a "who the fuck are you?" response (too bad I couldn't send a clip of Roger singing it)? Ignore it? Send a subpoena to Verizon?
Yesterday I received a slightly mocking text (regarding the football team I root for) from a Mysterious Person With A Vaguely Familiar Number. This is the second such text I've received from this dude/ette this season. I replied to the first one, saying something like "that's not a very nice thing to say," hoping that the response would give me some sort of clue to the sender's identity. Instead, s/he just said "it was a very appropriate thing to say."
What to do? Send a "who the fuck are you?" response (too bad I couldn't send a clip of Roger singing it)? Ignore it? Send a subpoena to Verizon?
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
They said there'd be peace on earth.
Thinking about The Punk Rock Girl reminded me that I love me The Waitresses, so "Christmas Wrapping" is on heavy rotation in the holiday mix playlist of Jackson's iPod this year. (Sadly, I couldn't find a version with the band itself on YouTube, and found this one with flashing lights to be the least offensive. To mollify my inner teenager, here's their video of "I Know What Boys Like".)
And, since 2009 has been kind of a crappy year, listening to Dolly Parton's "Hard Candy Christmas" seems to be appropriate.
What songs are you listening to this holiday season?
And, since 2009 has been kind of a crappy year, listening to Dolly Parton's "Hard Candy Christmas" seems to be appropriate.
What songs are you listening to this holiday season?
One is silver, and the other gold.
Just a little note from Jackson -- I've added a few new blogs to the list. In no particular order ....
Emily Magazine and Things That I Ate That I Loved -- both from Gawker alumna Emily Gould, allegedly the poster girl for Internet TMI and navel gazing. Whatever. I like her writing, and her Cooking the Books videos from the Awl amuse me.
Rachel Kramer Bussel -- another blogger/writer/whatever I found via the Gawker comments. Sometimes NSFW (she's a former sex columnist for the Village Voice, after all).
Nerissa (mostly) and Katryna Nields -- chicks with guitars. Check them out here (track number 10, "Fountain of Youth," is one of my favorites).
Emily Magazine and Things That I Ate That I Loved -- both from Gawker alumna Emily Gould, allegedly the poster girl for Internet TMI and navel gazing. Whatever. I like her writing, and her Cooking the Books videos from the Awl amuse me.
Rachel Kramer Bussel -- another blogger/writer/whatever I found via the Gawker comments. Sometimes NSFW (she's a former sex columnist for the Village Voice, after all).
Nerissa (mostly) and Katryna Nields -- chicks with guitars. Check them out here (track number 10, "Fountain of Youth," is one of my favorites).
Monday, December 21, 2009
Send lawyers, guns, and money.
Every now and then, my friends, lawyers get it right. And I have two examples -- I've been meaning to talk about the first one for a bit, and reading about the second one triggered the post. And, just because The Universe Has A Sense Of Humor, they both have ties to Iran-Contra. Fun, no?
The first example -- in the dying days of Bush II, the United States of America decided that Ben Kuehne, a prominent lawyer in Miami (who, surely coincidentally, was one of the lawyers who represented the Gore campaign during the 2000 election litigation), should be prosecuted for laundering drug money. Why? Because he gave a legal opinion that an alleged drug dealer had non drug related assets to sell to pay another lawyer (Roy Black, of the William Kennedy Smith trial) for his defense in the criminal trial. (Whew. Does that sentence make sense? Alleged drug dealer has property in Colombia, sells it to pay for Roy, Ben is hired to review to make sure it's Not Coke proceeds, says it's not -- Ok, I think so.) Then a different drug dealer turned snitch says to the feds: "No way, man. That was totally drug money." Ben gets charged, despite the fact that the money laundering statute says pretty clearly that a lawyer gets paid with tainted money is not guilty of money laundering. It may be money that she has to give back at some point in a forfeiture proceeding, but whatever.
Fortunately, Ben had good lawyers. And federal judges who understood the law. And a Justice Department who finally realized this was not the sort of case that the United States of America should be spending its limited amount of law enforcement time and resources on. The WSJ Law Blog lays the whole Ben Kuehne story out here.
The Iran Contra connection? One of Ben's lawyers was John Nields, who was chief counsel for the House's Iran Contra investigatory committee. And there's a bonus! Two of Nields's daughters have a band that is one of my favorites in the "chicks with guitars" genre of singer-songwriters. And they (well, mostly Nerissa) have a blog! (Note to self -- must add it to the blogroll.)
Second story -- read this WSJ Law Blog post about plea bargains and innocent people pleading guilty. The background is the criminal investigation and trials of members of management at Broadcom (remember that company?) who allegedly violated all sorts of the securities laws. One of them decided to go to trial, and the government -- our government -- basically browbeat a bunch of others at Broadcom in an attempt to get them to testify at trial in a certain way. Read the transcript of the ruling by the federal judge who dismissed the charges here. Those Broadcom guys and gals were lucky that they were able to have lawyers good enough and dogged enough to get the judge to look at what actually happened. It's scary, frankly, that this happens.
The Iran Contra connection? One of the Broadcom defendants was represented by Oliver North's lawyer Brendan Sullivan, famed throughout the land for his immortal line "I am not a potted plant!" (directed at Senator Daniel Inoyue, when the senator grew annoyed at Sullivan's objections during the hearings).
The first example -- in the dying days of Bush II, the United States of America decided that Ben Kuehne, a prominent lawyer in Miami (who, surely coincidentally, was one of the lawyers who represented the Gore campaign during the 2000 election litigation), should be prosecuted for laundering drug money. Why? Because he gave a legal opinion that an alleged drug dealer had non drug related assets to sell to pay another lawyer (Roy Black, of the William Kennedy Smith trial) for his defense in the criminal trial. (Whew. Does that sentence make sense? Alleged drug dealer has property in Colombia, sells it to pay for Roy, Ben is hired to review to make sure it's Not Coke proceeds, says it's not -- Ok, I think so.) Then a different drug dealer turned snitch says to the feds: "No way, man. That was totally drug money." Ben gets charged, despite the fact that the money laundering statute says pretty clearly that a lawyer gets paid with tainted money is not guilty of money laundering. It may be money that she has to give back at some point in a forfeiture proceeding, but whatever.
Fortunately, Ben had good lawyers. And federal judges who understood the law. And a Justice Department who finally realized this was not the sort of case that the United States of America should be spending its limited amount of law enforcement time and resources on. The WSJ Law Blog lays the whole Ben Kuehne story out here.
The Iran Contra connection? One of Ben's lawyers was John Nields, who was chief counsel for the House's Iran Contra investigatory committee. And there's a bonus! Two of Nields's daughters have a band that is one of my favorites in the "chicks with guitars" genre of singer-songwriters. And they (well, mostly Nerissa) have a blog! (Note to self -- must add it to the blogroll.)
Second story -- read this WSJ Law Blog post about plea bargains and innocent people pleading guilty. The background is the criminal investigation and trials of members of management at Broadcom (remember that company?) who allegedly violated all sorts of the securities laws. One of them decided to go to trial, and the government -- our government -- basically browbeat a bunch of others at Broadcom in an attempt to get them to testify at trial in a certain way. Read the transcript of the ruling by the federal judge who dismissed the charges here. Those Broadcom guys and gals were lucky that they were able to have lawyers good enough and dogged enough to get the judge to look at what actually happened. It's scary, frankly, that this happens.
The Iran Contra connection? One of the Broadcom defendants was represented by Oliver North's lawyer Brendan Sullivan, famed throughout the land for his immortal line "I am not a potted plant!" (directed at Senator Daniel Inoyue, when the senator grew annoyed at Sullivan's objections during the hearings).
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Come and see me, I'm the same boy I used to be.
So, in a recent discussion with some Imaginary Friends about music or dating or youth or first cars or whatever, I was reminded of The Punk Rock Girl (have I mentioned her here before?), and started wondering about what she was up to these days. It turns out that she currently lives in the same city as I do, which is not the same city that we lived in in 10th grade. Quandary -- contact her or not? "Stalkerish and creepy" or "welcome blast from the past"? Oh, the conundrums of poor Jackson's life!
Since I am too lazy to do a search to see if I have mentioned her before (until now, there was no tag for her, so I am guessing that I have not), here's the short version. It was the era of AOR (album oriented rock) radio -- filled with corporate schlock and fossilized and heavily repeated classics. The PRG and I had known each other since 6th grade, but became good friends when we started working at the same place one summer. Long before any of these people made it on the radio in our part of the world, she introduced me to Elvis Costello, the Police, British new wave pop, and pre-"Purple Rain" Prince. She and I went to concerts, hung out at indie record stores, and watched hours of MTV during Martha Quinn's shifts, because she seemed to play the stuff we liked.
Yes, as one has noted, this isn't really punk rock (although she also introduced me to the Clash and the Sex Pistols), but that's what some old (like 30-ish!) dude at work called her one day, and so that's how I've always thought of her. She was artistic and cool and talented in a million different ways (she used to cut my hair and painted wall murals for a local business). I had a bit of a crush on her, but our outings never seemed to turn into dates.
We ended up going to different high schools (she moved a short distance) and then different towns for college. And I had a girlfriend senior year, who wasn't terribly interested in having me spend a whole lot of time with the PRG seeing shows. So . . .
Since I am too lazy to do a search to see if I have mentioned her before (until now, there was no tag for her, so I am guessing that I have not), here's the short version. It was the era of AOR (album oriented rock) radio -- filled with corporate schlock and fossilized and heavily repeated classics. The PRG and I had known each other since 6th grade, but became good friends when we started working at the same place one summer. Long before any of these people made it on the radio in our part of the world, she introduced me to Elvis Costello, the Police, British new wave pop, and pre-"Purple Rain" Prince. She and I went to concerts, hung out at indie record stores, and watched hours of MTV during Martha Quinn's shifts, because she seemed to play the stuff we liked.
Yes, as one has noted, this isn't really punk rock (although she also introduced me to the Clash and the Sex Pistols), but that's what some old (like 30-ish!) dude at work called her one day, and so that's how I've always thought of her. She was artistic and cool and talented in a million different ways (she used to cut my hair and painted wall murals for a local business). I had a bit of a crush on her, but our outings never seemed to turn into dates.
We ended up going to different high schools (she moved a short distance) and then different towns for college. And I had a girlfriend senior year, who wasn't terribly interested in having me spend a whole lot of time with the PRG seeing shows. So . . .
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