They Frankly Own the Place

And everybody is just noticing this now?:

Sen. Dick Durbin, on a local Chicago radio station this week, blurted out an obvious truth about Congress that, despite being blindingly obvious, is rarely spoken: "And the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place."

A good question

Atrios:

just what will inspire people to pay 75 cents (or whatever) for this pile of paper every day? In an overwhelmingly Democratic city, it ain't Rick Santorum columns.

It's kind of amazing to me how often people approach business without having any kind of pretense at supplying some demand.

Pig Death, NYC

WNYC has put together some info on the outbreak of Pig Death in Queens, NY.

That is what it's all about

It's about being into it:

DIY Lives

I finally, finally got around to actually reviewing one of the shows I've been to, last night's Screaming Females record release.

Service Inadequacies

Service Inadequacies, originally uploaded by Pintado.

Photo says it all.

Demo: Ben Franklin - Drink to Forget

Nothing says "Rock and Roll" like boxed wine. This is a somewhat personal tune. Aren't they all? Wokka wokka wokka. It's a little messy, to be sure, but it makes me smile:

Ben Franklin - Drink to Forget

I've been kicking around a song called Smile since Meltdowns days, and Eddie always called it "Drink to Forget," which was funny since that song wasn't about drinking at all, but it was made to sound like a drinking song. Anyway, I decided to write such a song just for Eddie, and it started out as a joke, but then it got pretty serious.

Drink To Forget by billygray

The Optimist and the Monkey

We three that are Ben Franklin were asked to play at IM Automata Chino, Iron Monkey's new rock venue in Jersey City. Jim Testa has been trying to get me to see a show with him there for the last two months and I haven't yet made it, so I guess I'll finally get to see what it looks like on the inside! The show will be Sat, May 16th and it's 21+, that much I know.

We've got a working title for our record: Optimist. We're recording it on Sat May 2nd with Daniel Schlett on the boards. We've got a lot of new material, and if you make it out to the Monkey, you'll basically be hearing us perform Optimist, although I don't think we'll be able to cram all 12 tracks into a 45 minute set. Depends on the bill that night. [I'm also taking quite a leap in assuming that we'll definitely nail all 12 tracks in one day, but if the Minutemen can do it, I think we damn well can do it!] We should have some kind of single/CD-R at the show, but I think we're going to take our time releasing the actual record.

On a tangent: The Press are playing Automata Chino this Saturday night, they are always a really good show, highly recommended.

Sometimes

It's really great to be a NY-er. Those corrupt politicians know how to throw things at the wall and make them stick, we can at least say that much about them.

I'm seriously considering working for any anti-Bloomberg campaign.

Call Me Crazy

But this is what I've been thinking (and saying) for a long time:

A collective refusal to prosecute the grotesque war crimes that we know our Government committed is to indict all of us in those crimes, to make us complict in their commission.

Distrust

I think you can put me firmly in the distrust camp. Actions mean a lot more than words.

The Face of Proposition 8 - demo

Scrapped together the vocal parts for this song, finally. It's not sung very strongly, but I was figuring out how it should be sung, kinda happy with how it came out, I think it's very funny.

The Face of Proposition 8 by billygray

Heaven Is A Place

Me: When they say, "she's gone up to heaven, she's with the angels now, giving them a hard time," do they really believe there is a Heaven and that we all go there?

Gönül: yeah, they really do believe that. Every word of it.

Hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to work we go

This morning's reading comes from Matt Taibbi, yet again, in response to Jake DeSantis' childish Op-Ed in the NYTimes:

I mean, half of Wall Street is unemployed right now. There are plenty of unemployed traders out there whose resumes don't include such entries as "Worked for years at small unit of AIG that helped destroy the universe; throughout that time was completely ignorant of burgeoning global disaster unfolding 5 feet from my desk."

[ ... ]

Hey Jake, it's not like you were curing cancer. You were a fucking commodities trader. Thanks to a completely insane, horribly skewed set of societal values that puts a premium on greed and severely undervalues selflessness, communal spirit and intellectualism -- values that make millionaires out of people like you and leave teachers and nurses, the people who raise your kids and clean your parents' bedpans, comparatively penniless -- you made a lot of money.

Good for you. Consider yourself lucky. But your company went belly-up and broke, almost certainly thanks in part to you, and now you don't get your bonus.

So be a man and deal with it. The rest of us do, when we get bad breaks, and we've had a lot more of them than you. And stop whining. Jesus Christ.

Also: Fuck them.

for the record

I couldn't be more disinterested.

Ghosts and Stuff

So I've got a love song, it's called Ghosts.

Ghosts by billygray

Just a quick demo to sound it all out and firm up the order of things. Has one line in there I meant to change because it's a bit cliche, but will have to fix later.

I've got this other one, it's called Tell Us How You Really Feel, which is basically about the memory drama that seems to ensue for me whenever I have a big falling out with anybody in my life.

Tell Us How You Really Feel by billygray